Life Drawing

I’m going to some life drawing sessions. So far I’ve attended the days children are modeling for portrait drawing or painting. I’m not very interested in portraits but the drawing experience has been fun and challenging. I’ve always liked drawing the spaces around the model in addition to drawing the model. This first drawing was of a 13 year old boy. I used charcoal – 11 x 17 paper.

In this second drawing I used blue 12 x 12 paper and colored pencil. I left my house without all my pencils so I had to manage with a fairly limited selection. This boy was 9 and he was a cousin of the first boy. Because these are long poses (15 minutes at a time for 3 hours), they are both rather stiff. I was impressed with these boys for their ability to sit still for so long!

Paintings on Rice Paper

These works are all made with Sumi ink on rice paper.  Some have watercolor additions. I did a number of these drawings on rice paper for the open studio in December.  These pieces were fun because it was challenging to recreate a Chinese style traditional painting.  I have no illusion to be an expert in this area so right now I think of this work as practice but not “serious.” I used traditional Chinese landscape, flower and koi fish images for reference.  I also added my “chop” signature which is my name in Chinese.  I had the stamp made in China.  I stamped my name using red ink which I purchased from a Chinese art supply store in Atlanta.