Drawing, Music and Painting

I drew the above drawing in a life drawing session about 2 years ago.  Every once in awhile, I enjoy taking a line drawing, like this, and creating a painting from it.  The drawing was smaller than what I wanted so I  placed the acrylic cross hairs I use to lay over a photo and laid it on top of my drawing.  I discussed this in this previous post. I then drew the two cross hair lines on a larger format watercolor paper and re-drew the lines  of the drawing. This enlarged my image.

Knowing that I would need to stay focused to paint this image using my imagination, I  opted to play some sort of music in the background. The figure appeared rather restful and contemplative, so I chose two CDs of  Adagios. One was Mozart and the other Vivaldi.

I followed what I had learned in my workshop this summer about carving out a pathway of light along the figure’s form and allowing that to remain the white of the paper.  I chose colors that seemed to fit the music I was listening to as well as the mood of the figure.  The above painting is what I ended up with.

It seemed only fitting that I post a drawing and a portrait painting, today, as my first session classes ended tonight and they were in  Beginning Drawing  and Watercolor Portrait.  You may view some of the students’ work here. 

Thank-you to all my students who contributed to the Student Art Page.

Seeing Lake Michigan

This was the first time my Grand daughter saw Lake Michigan. I remember the first time I swam in Lake Michigan and the first time I went running into the ocean. There is something special about the grandeur of it all.

Painting with a Friend

                      

     Tracey                                                 Leslie

             

        Tracey                                                  Leslie

                         

    Tracey                                                    Leslie

If you ever get the opportunity, paint with a friend. Years ago, Tracey and I began to get together and paint outdoors from life and indoors from reference photos. We learned together and laughed a lot about mistakes or hard challenges. I remember one day when we drove around the entire time and never found anything we wanted to paint or draw but came home with some great reference photos. I find that I learn a lot just from watching others draw and paint. We are always amazed by the differences in our work even though we are painting the same subject. I have posted several of the things Tracey and I have painted above. You can click on them if you would like to view them larger. Tracey’s blog can be found here.  Tracey does incredible paintings and drawings of local Indiana landscapes and buildings. Recently, she has expressed an interest in learning to draw and paint animals so I am lucky enough to share that journey with her.

I have also added a Student Page to my pages above. I did this because some of you have expressed an interest through your comments and e-mails in viewing them. Thank-you to my students for giving me permission to photograph and post your work.