Thursday, June 02, 2011

Nudes, summer, wandering...

Lucie from Paris, #5

Summer appears to be here but it also seems the time of year I feel a little off track. I have not gotten used to the structured seasons that Boston has. Spring came/went so quick. Things were busy, great, everyone was out meeting people & enjoying the lack of snow. But that season quickly passes and now the travel season has set in. I still have not mastered this whole summer vacation thing. When I was in Los Angeles I always took my "vacations" in the winter. Christmas in Boston, January in Utah, maybe another short trip to San Fran some other part of the year. Here everyone seems to come and go in unison and suddenly I am left in the city leaving voicemails on friends phones realizing I'll be watching Netflix movies or biking around an empty city for a few days.

I'm in between paintings at the moment. I lost some steam with open studios and I haven't quite got my rhythm back. There are several things I know I should be doing next. Applying for grants/residencies/shows, writing a decent artist statement, and finding some models (men too, I want to paint men right now, but they're skittish models sometimes.)

To hopefully find a little inspiration I did some life drawing this weekend. I tried some new pencils & pens and quickly realized why I never really use colored pencils. Looking at the sketches after a few days they do look a little better. Maybe I had a more productive Memorial day weekend than I thought. But I still wish they were better. I don't really like life drawing sessions because they always do such quick poses (10 minutes longest?) I like to have up to 30 minutes. I would really like to do even longer and paint. I don't like poses under 5 minutes. But it's hard to find sessions that don't do a majority of 1-5 minute poses. What's funny is that everyone complains about it but they keep setting up the sessions that way.

Here are some sketches from that session, there are more on Flickr. The space was small so it was hard to get enough distance from the model. She was a good model though- Lucie from Paris. I'd like to have her pose for painting in a set-up more in my own control.

Lucie from Paris, #7

Lucie from Paris, #3

Lucie from Paris, #1