Jester

Jeepers Creepers!

I have just spent two hours battling with my printer!

What a waste of time and yet what a necessary evil. My head is absolutely splitting now with the effort and I am now desperately behind in my day's work.

It all started when I wanted to print out the next in my 'Many Faces of Vic' series.

This is the first drawing/painting which I completed yesterday. This morning when out on my bike ride I got a couple of new ideas which I decided I would draw up first thing to get the new ideas down.

I worked them up on the computer first - to get the elements put together and sitting right and then I went to print. Very red and yellow and definitely lacking in Blue. So I did a test print. No cyan coming through at all. So I did one clean and then another and then a deep clean. You know the way it works, over and over I cleaned and printed. I changed the cartridge and had to replace two others that were empty by that time. I don't know why I am moaning on really, everyone has printer problems. I guess I just needed to vent!

So now I am calm again - the problem is sorted, I think and hope. But I have at least got my prints with cyan included :-)

This Jester is a bit of fun. I had not meant it to be such a caricature, but Vic's many expressions do so lend themselves to exaggeration and fun. I hope that the next two will not be quite so cartoon like, but i suppose we will have to see.

So you see - I decided not to put the jester's hat onto the relief sculpture which I made previously but have made a completely new picture instead. I think this is better. It simplifies the image. The many Vics with some strange snake-like hat would have been very complex, however, I have not ruled it out entirely. For now though I have made this jester with his strange organic and lively hat. I think Vic, the Jester, seems to almost afraid of it and to be honest I think if I were to wear one like it, I too would be very afraid.

Still I like the darkness of this drawing - How often are our comedians in fact manic on stage and miserable and fearful behind the scenes. Two sides of one coin.

In conclusion it only remains for me to say that this is in no way a reflection of the character of the real Vic. and in any event he does not have a hat like this, at least, I don't think so......

Nude Study

When I was in college I was lucky enough to be able to tap into many life drawing sessions that were going on - some during my own studio time, some at lunchtimes and sometimes just at random other times.

I loved it! and I hated it! It is so difficult to do it well! Though of course there are some people who are soooo talented that they just breeze through it all without ever tearing their hair out. I found it very difficult, very challenging but so rewarding when something went right and when you learned something new about the human body that creates such a beautiful form or line.

As you can see from this drawing I am most concerned with volume and form. I look and look at the model until I start to see slight shadows that define the form of the body and the muscles and bones beneath the skin.

Now of course, i could have used charcoal (which of course i do from time to time also) which makes great shadows and wonderful dramatic shadings and forms with good strong dark and smokey greys on crisp white paper. I, however, prefer to use this method of drawing, which is using a fine pen with ink. This one I think is done with an instant ink pen - as in I do not have to load it with ink, but some drawings done with a dip pen do make wonderful sort of jerky lines that are non uniform and come and go and ebb and flow and sometimes make great black blobs of ink! But if you remember me talking about the 'happy accident' you will recall that it can in fact enhance the finished drawings. Sometimes though it can ruin it!

With this instant pen you get a much more uniform line but you can just keep drawing and drawing without running out of ink (well of course the pens do run out and you have to throw them away and get a new one in) and you can do those wonderful hatching and cross hatching lines that I so adore. It is a small bit anal I must admit, but I love the rhythm of working this way and discovering new shadows, as I mentioned above, as you work and work the surface of the paper.

The nude itself becomes nothing more than a slab of meat - if that does not sound too rude, but you do stop noticing that it is a naked body as you become obsessed with the lines, the forms and the volumes.

The importance of life drawing is manifold. For me especially I find that by drawing so much all the time I absorb what a body looks like and how it works - By 'copying' from life, if you will, the information passes into my brain in a subconscious way and then when I start to do a sculpture from out of my head all that information comes out - sometimes it becomes warped or spliced with other forms, nuts or leaves or whatever I am fascinated with at the time, but there are those nice volumes and forms to draw on. It is great and makes the work more interesting even if it is an abstracted or distorted piece.

So those are a few notes on Life Drawing for you and I hope you enjoy the drawing too.