Right Shoulder

Right Shoulder 14x14 pencil, copyright 2012

At the moment I'm trying to avoid having to admit that my latest pastel just isn't working and decided instead to post something that is working.  Last night was the first time I've been to Life Drawing since before the New Year and it turned out to be a much needed break.

My best effort of the night was this pencil sketch from one of the 20 minute poses.  The model had good muscle definition in his arms and shoulders, so that's where I decided to focus.

I forgot to post about the Life Drawing exhibit last month, so I will tell you here that it went well.   A lot of people (mostly artists and friends of artists) showed up for the reception.  It was enjoyable to have the time to talk with one another about technical details - things like what sort of paper everyone used, and how some of us seem to prefer drawing backs and some prefer drawing heads, and pencil verses charcoal.  Hopefully we'll be able to do it again sometime.

Back to basics

Toronto Waterfront Skyline 5x7 graphite pencil, copyright 2011
click to purchase this sketch

The count of nearly finished paintings this month is up to three.  I seem to keep hitting a wall with these bigger ones. They are all almost but not quite there, and I end up getting frustrated and setting them aside.  To give myself a break, a little sketchbook was dusted off and it was back to basics with a pencil drawing. It's been awhile since I've done anything in pencil and it was a nice refresher, a reminder to keep it simple.  This one is from a photo I took this summer, looking at Toronto from a ferry ride to the regional airport.   Only about 2/3 of the CN Tower fit into the sketch, which of course dominates the skyline in its extreme scale.

On a technical note, I've been getting a lot of hits from questionable web sites based in Russia.  One of them even had a notice that it had been removed due to copyright violations.  Seems a bit suspicious, and since I hate to cover my images with watermarks that can be removed by determined and patient personnel, I'm going to start post the images at a lower quality.  Hopefully that won't affect how they look on a computer monitor, but it should discourage printing them out.