After learning to see and construct the head and facial structure we moved on to drawing the shapes in two values, still using basic shapes, no features yet.
LoveLifeDrawing II
Author mayhewjnm
Love Life Drawing I
At a local Life Drawing lesson in the Spring the instructor had materials from LoveLifeDrawing.com.
I was impressed with the straight-forward breakdown of difficult concepts (how to draw a live figure), so I looked at the website and worked on the ‘Fresh Eyes Challenge’.
This Fall, I saw LoveLifeDrawing was offering a new Portrait Course. This fit with my goals, so I joined the ‘study group’. This costs a monthly fee that pays for all courses as long as you are a member. The teacher is called Kenzo and he’s in the UK.
It was a great course! The subject was broken down into manageable steps, and the site has lots of opportunity for sharing your work and progress, plus an excellent system for receiving video feedback once a week. The course was on live Zoom calls, with real-time questions encouraged.
Two or three times a month there is a live ‘Co-drawing’ session for 90 minutes each time. We all draw 5 minute and 15 minute poses/portraits and then can hold up our work for immediate feedback.
People’s Choice Award
This painting was recently awarded People’s Choice Award at our RCAA member Show in Marshall, IL, at the Gaslight Art Colony. The Show is over, but this painting is still on display there until the end of December.
It’s the first time I’ve received a People’s Choice Award, and I’m delighted!
Small Art Show 2024, Arts Illiana
I was fortunate to have three paintings selected by the Juror for display in this year’s Small Art Show. (For this show, each piece must be no more than 12 inches in height or width).
The Show Opening was on Friday, Nov 18, 2024, complete with live ukulele music! The Show will run until Jan 10, 2025.
If you’re in the area, go along and take a look! There’s a lot of enjoyable art there.
Plein Air, August 29, 2024
This is my finished painting, started the previous week. It was lovely to be out there, enjoying the scenery and sunshine, moving paint around on this super-smooth board with my palette knife.
A few people walking along the path stopped to investigate and chat a bit. I used to be fearful of this, but have grown to appreciate it. The comments are always very positive, and the people seem genuinely happy that someone bothers to paint. I felt that maybe people have a sense that there must be something okay with the world if artists can take the time to observe, concentrate on, and record the beauty around them.
Plein Air, Fall 2024
After the William Turman Plein Air Event at the Swope Art Musem in Terre Haute in June 2024, I and a couple of other participants decided to go out painting more regularly.
Since the last half of August we have been going to local parks almost every week on a Friday morning. We found a good routine was to go to the same site two weeks in a row, sometimes to finish a painting, sometimes to explore a new idea that came up the previous week.
Here are two paintings from the first week, August 23, 2024:
Then I tried part of the same scene with a palette knife, on a smaller board:
And I started a painting of the river facing north, using oil crayons as an underlayer ‘drawing’:
It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience!
William Turman Plein Air Event, Terre Haute, June 2024
On June 13-16, 2024 I took part in the second Plein Air Event in Terre Haute. This year we were allowed 10 blank canvases, up from 5 last year. I could not manage to paint 10! I ended up with 5 paintings.
I decided to have the Courthouse as my focal point this year, painting it from different directions at different times of day.
I decided to try this view again on Gessobord, so I went back later on the second day to block in the shapes, and then returned on the morning of the third day to finish it.
I also painted to the west of the Courthouse, at Dewey Point at the Wabashiki wetland, over two evenings:
My third location was in Fairbanks Bank, on the banks of the Wabash River, but this year I turned my attention to the Courthouse instead of the river. I painted two paintings from slightly different locations.
When I returned to complete it the next evening, lots of people started arriving for a family concert (a local Wind Band) playing in the Amphitheater! I had not expected this, and it was a very different atmosphere! It turned out to be really fun. Lots of people stopped to look at what I was doing and make comments, or tell me their story; children were especially vocal and engaged. A girl told me she loved my painting and it ought to be in an art museum, and then she picked a clover and gave it to me as my award! Beautiful experiences!
Recent Oil award
This painting was awarded First Place in Oil Painting at the Wabash Valley Art Guild Spring Show in May 2024.
I took the photo 3 weeks after she had been bitten in the face by a dog, in which she lost part of her lower lip and now had a significant scar down her chin. She was five at the time, and has been a real trooper about the ordeal.
I think the painting was my own therapy, to celebrate her continued beauty and character even after such an unpleasant event.
Another Self-portrait
This was from a screenshot I took of myself, while waiting during a video call. I liked the colors, and the different-than-usual head position.
Painterly Portrait Course, Spring 2024
marymayhewart 