Boats and Figures and Art Walk

Had a fairly busy week last week. Tuesday we had our monthly membership meeting at Cathedral Square Gallery, and I took two figure drawings downtown to hang in my space (Seated Madonna and Reclining Madonna, which I had previously hung at Chez Giselle). On Wednesday morning our plein air group met again at Scott's Landing. Here is the Live Bait boat I painted on site with oil on canvas (8"x10"), along with a photo of the scene I was painting. This is not finished yet, but I did get pretty far along - probably will just adjust the highlights and shadows and add a few other touch-ups. Trying to keep it simple this time.

Wednesday night I drove downtown for Figure Group, but our model did not show up this week (Bummer!). We did have a group discussion about the need for more participation and ways to get the word out to recruit more members into the group so we can continue to pay for models and rent for our space at Space 301. So any of you out there that haven't been coming or have always wanted to draw the figure from life, come on down on Wednesday nights! It's a wonderful opportunity to practice your drawing skills, and a very affordable way to provide for a model on a regular basis. You really can't beat it!

On Thursday I took my Silas watercolor portrait to Southern Art and Frame shop for framing. And we did have our Figure Drawing class with Ben Shamback on Thursday night. This week we focused on drawing planes to define the shapes of the figure, and shading the figure based on the planes. Ben brought a great book about a British artist (Eane Uglow) who is expert at using planes to define the forms of the figure. Here are a couple of my drawings attempting this exercise.

Then on Friday night I manned my space for my first Art Walk since joining the Cathedral Square Gallery. I did not sell anything, but we had a good crowd and I enjoyed talking to the visitors to the gallery. A few folks were interested in the dog and chicken painting (Vision Outside Fellini's) and asked whether I did pet portraits - which is something I would truly love to do.