Ski bum

I drew this guy in at the ski area I was visiting this holiday vacation. He never stopped moving but his face was so interesting, I wanted to see if I could capture it. I don't know if I did, but I really liked the sketch so I thought I'd see if I could turn it into an interesting painting. I'm certainly interested by it, hopefully others are, too.

I like the sketch much better. Perhaps as time goes by, I'll get better at transcribing the original marks onto the painting. On the other hand, painting can be about something else. This painting is the original image after reflection. It's also about a guy with jowls whereas the first guy is really more sporty. Hum.

Notebook drawings.

I did some drawings in my little daily notebook in one of the whistler pubs after a day of skiing. I really, really like these. I don't worry about finesse at all. I just do what interests me which is the faces of the people and their relationships. Lines, movement in space, the content of space, lights and shadows entertain me endlessly.

figure painting

I feel rather triumphant when I succeed in forcing myself to address paints and a paint brush when doing figures. It's like making a two year old clean her face. She dodges, twists and turns, anything to avoid the wash cloth.

I made her rather fatter that she is so I simply brought the blue background in further. Her breasts were glowing like headlights until I darkened just a tad the shadowy side. I also worked on subtle value changes and using warm versus cold, all things I learned about in my classes and now just have to work into muscle memory.

I had thought that I wasn't so interested in realistic figure painting but the more I do it, more I enjoy it. I'm still not so interested in getting a person's real skin tone down. I'm still looking forward to seeing where I am in March.