FLAMENCO

       This was a very challenging life session at the Basic Inquiry. Usually poses work their way up from 1 to 15 minutes. Our model, Marilou, a professional Flamenco dancer from Acapulco, got into a rhythm first, recalling some routines before settling with a pose for 5 minutes before shaking it all off to strike another pose for 5 minutes again. This continued for 3 hours. I did quite a number of quick-fire sketches before finding my way to this one, using different tools, charcoal pencils, charcoal sticks, blue pencils, news print and eventually watercolor. I managed to pin down a fast pencil sketch and a spontaneous light wash within the 5 minutes. After it all ended, I slowed down and added shadows and background splashes.

MORE WATERCOLOR PRACTICE

 

This is a painting I did during a recent watercolor workshop I attended. This was my second attempt painting the same picture, trying to understand how color behaves in water. From washes to creating texture, I took notes and mostly observed what the instructor was doing in class (even if I brought all my materials) and then continued to paint at home. I took liberties at using different splashes of warm and cool colors departing from the stoic cold gray of the reference photo. The other two I uploaded were not part of the workshop, but I thought of doing a black and white sketch first to come up with different interpretations of light and shadows. After selecting the best one, I did a small color study (palm size) before doing the bigger piece. I learned from the first attempt, that preparation is key. Someone once said that watercolors is much like living your life forward and understanding it backward. You do it and then you say I shouldn't have done that, and it's too late. It can't happen again.

PAINT NITE DEUX

 

BRIDGE OVER LILLIED WATERS: PAINT NITE DEUX ~ Thank you to Cu Xi and friends! Actually, their friend #5 couldn't make it so, that night I was Yolanda, hanging out with some classy ladies. The tag line of the event says Drink Creatively: I used my drink to get creative. Budweiser is now a part of this painting's DNA

AT THE QUACK OF DAWN

            This was a practice painting using a photo reference, courtesy of Owno Photo. I could somehow relate to the lone duck, breaking away from the group, finding a quiet spot to call it's own in the early misty morning. 

STEVESTON: GULF OF GEORGIA CANNERY LINE ART

I was with a friend MJ walking along Moncton St. with our sketch books. It was around 4pm and establishments were winding down their operations and calling it a day. We managed to get ourselves some coffee and pastries and sat ourselves at a table facing the Cannery. The sun was out but it was really chilly and windy. This was done straight with a micron pen. Pretty proud of myself since I'm so used to laying down sketchy guidelines to begin with.

COAL HARBOR LIGHT SHED

         This is a sketch I did on site of an art installation known as the Light Shed. It was very cold outside. I was on a bench not too far from the installation, shivering, while everybody else seemed fine. People were in shorts, biking, jogging, running. (My nose went on its own marathon as well). The amazing thing about this is that it's entirely a cast made from a light gray non-shiny aluminum. It also has internal lights that are timed to go off at night, illuminating the sculpture from the inside, shining through the glazed windows and through the crack of the slightly ajar front door. On the end of one of the beams the little hut is resting on, there was a round, black palm-sized sticker that suggested that underneath the shed was a good place to kiss.

THE "BATEMAN"

        "Have you heard about this guy named Robert Bateman?" I asked. ROBERT BATEMAN? ROBERT BATEMAN?! "He's only the best living WATERCOLOR artist in Canada." A confession I made to Robert about a conversation I had with watercolor artists since I only found out about who he was a week before meeting him. Robert laughed and said thank you. Then he leaned in a bit and whispered, "I actually paint in acrylics and oils." (Some fast facts about him: In the 1950s he went around the world in a Land Rover ; He drew an unusually large crowd for a living artist at his exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute in '87 ; He destroyed his own painting of orca whales demonstrating his protest against the possibility of oil tankers passing through B.C.'s Douglas Channel.)

WHEN I WAS AWAY

Holy Post itz Batman! This greeted me as I came back to work from a 4 day holiday. Our resident prankster Jordan has once again had too much time on his hands! I sat on my un-posted-it chair looking and observing the meticulous work laid out like overlapping colored paper bricks. Unbelievable. Everything was tiled from the cpu, phone, mug, mousepad, even the narrow tops of the monitors were covered by half vertically torn post its. The 2 botttom drawers were taped together as I later on discovered. Good grief. It also came with a disclaimer and a note that justified the use of post its! Nice. Well played. It felt more like a treat than a prank. A cool work of art at the start of the day. Amazing. I felt kinda bad having to destroy it all by taking it apart so I decided to slowly lift off portions of it until the end of the week. If anyone needs post its, don't ask. Just take 'em!

STILL LIFES

This was my second attempt on the same still lifes. I used masking fluid for the highlights on the glass jar and corn kernels. The masking fluid is like rubber cement. Once it dries, you can freely paint over the area without fussing with which parts to leave out. When you are ready to reveal the highlights, you simply rub the dried masking fluid off with your finger or the sticky side of some scotch tape. The preserved white areas will have a sharp edge to it though, so if you need to soften the edges, you will have to go over it slowly with just the right values. In this exercise, I left the highlights as they were and did not retouch any of the edges. 

BEN CUMBERBATCH

Back in the day, I remember asking myself if it were possible to solve the mystery while reading one of the Sherlock Holmes Chronicles. I went as far as taking notes of each character, their quirks, every evidence presented in the story, finding connections, jotting down my impressions and hypotheses before I got to the end of the story. When I did, I was far from solving the crime. (Maybe a puff of opium from a pipe would have helped?) There were crucial details left out in the story. (Unfair!) Details that Sherlock observed that Watson missed. From that time, I decided to read it for sheer entertainment. Having seen the TV Series adaptation of Sherlock portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch, I am so looking forward to Season 4. This is a quick sketch I made using a blue colored pencil.