Art

My adventures in visual arts so far have been very enjoyable. I love my classes (ok, maybe i only like the watercolour class), and i love experimenting on my own at home too.

The drawing and painting class is my favourite. We've covered the basics and it's surprising how much you can achieve and learn in one class. We did the traditional still life fruit of bowl drawing, in pencil/charcoal and then in acrylic in the first 2 classes. I can't find the pencil drawing. Oops.

This is my classmate.

Then we had a life model come in - numerous quick 2-minute sketches here and an hour and a half sitting later in the session.

I was worried about nothing. The whole thing is rather sedate.

The model dozed off in the midde of the session.

My portraits class is quite fun too. Easily the liveliest classmates i have, even though they are also the oldest bunch at several decades older. In chronological order:

Ruby, a classmate

An attempt at Cate

The eyes are not quite right...

My teacher, Jasmina, looking rather sleepy here

(nearly all the models do, probably something to do with the light in their face)



Lady Model (forgot her name)



Graham Johnson, Professional Gentleman Model for 30 years (interesting dude)

Fareed, the handsome guy who was in yesterday's session

(he was rather sleepy too. He doesn't look this old but I got the eyes right =D).

Do you see any improvements?

My watercolour class is more like a workshop. Most of the other students already have some basic-intermediate skills in watercolour painting whereas i'm floundering in all the water (pun not intended). The teacher doesn't teach the basics etc, but rather each week she explains and demonstrates painting methods/styles e.g. botanical painting, landscapes, still life, buildings, etc. Usually, the class starts with an hour and a half of talking, as well as lots of ooh-ing and aah-ings over several pretty paintings. I picked up a few tips from these lectures but mostly, i've had to learn by myself from books and the Internet. Oh well...

I've got more paintings i made at home, haven't taken their photos yet. Will do something about that soon.

Oh wait, i have one. Here is Harriet (acrylic). See what i wrote to my sister:

"Over the weekend, I made my first large wrap-stretched canvas and totally ruined it. As I was ruining it, I was thinking “horrible…”. So i called it Horace the Horrible, even though the colours are quite pretty. Then I thought maybe it’s a Harriet instead (am re-reading Emma). So now it’s Harriet the Horrible. Like Harriet Smith the character, Harriet the Horrible is pretty enough to look at, but seriously lacks substance. When I finished the base colours, I then put 2 black patches in to cover up 2 small holey patches. As you can see."

Hmm....i'm not sure what this proves. That i have the supreme ability to waste perfectly good canvas or that my e-mails are so boring. Arrgh.