Royal Winter Fair Time

It's now officially fall and I'm thinking ahead to the Royal Winter Fair in November. I am so bound by calendars these days with deadlines and commitments that it doesn't seem there is time time breathe. So when I was looking at November and felt there was something missing, it finally occurred to me that it was the Royal that made it's mark felt at that time. If you live in the area definitely take advantage of it to get up close and draw everything from horses to Lamas. Unfortunately they no longer have the farm birds as they once did. In many ways they don't have a lot of what they once did. I do get mad at all the cars and SUV's instead of animals, but if you pick your day right, it can be spectacular. One of my favourites was the Belgian Blue cattle...the Schwarzenegger of cows with their double muscles. Regrettably they are no longer considered worthy of the show. Regardless, it's worth it.

As for the donkey drawing...it's from a Seneca school trip this summer to the Donkey Sanctuary just outside Guelph. Another must visit for your drawing list. At least it is for me.

Drawing workout

This week I had Ed Cz into the studio for some drawing that was a bit overdue. Over the next 5 hours Ed offered excellent poses and for me, over 150 studies and drawings later, a terrific feeling of exhilaration that one gets after a great work out.

For the first 3 hrs we had rapid pose after rapid pose, none more than over a minute. The floor was strewn with ripped off newsprint and dust and broken pieces of conte. I went through 4 pads before we broke for a bite.

The drawings started with studies of force dynamics. My only goal was to capture the force of life vs. gravity as well as the displacement of air as he pushed his body out from the central axis.

Next stage were linear studies done quickly with charcoal pencil. The evening ended with more sustained studies of form as well as stronger conte studies of the light over the form.

The last works above starting from the bottom are a continuation of the study of the back done earlier (posted below).

With the anatomy classes starting next week, and no afternoon class before, I intend to make the most of Ed's modeling every week now that I have him booked solid for the fall.

fun with skeletons

that sort of sounds strange, but I did have fun yesterday when with an hour to kill in the studio, I started drawing a skeleton for practice and ended up with this group of laughing bones. Because of the angle of the teeth in the skull, it always seems if skeletons are smiling. Odd to be happy to be dead. Something so ironic.

It's always fun to play with images in Painter or Photoshop and this resulted.