Work Thursday, Saturday and Today

It's been a busy day today - starting out with scrubbing out some soup bones and hanging them on the line to dry (wet bone smells a bit weird) as I thought they might make interesteing painting surfaces for hand made chunky pendants.

I will write up the rest tomorrow. Have run out of steam!

Self Portrait and beating the chalk dust

A friend suggested I tie something round my face to stop the chalk dust reacting with the sinus all the time so today I armed myself with a long sleeved tee shirt and did just that. The exercise for today was to do a self portrait using a random Indian ink background so set up the big mirror on one of my high easels and sketched myself all togged up and ready to go using the Rembrandt chalk pastels and a touch of white oil pastel for the eye highlights. I LOVE the way the Indian ink shows through the chalk and adds an atmosphere all of its own...

Untitled Male Torso - Indian Ink

For art school I've been tituing with different things for drawing and learning so many different things is such a short space of time sometimes I feel a bit thick as it takes a while at times to fully grasp what you are learning. Some things I 'get' instantly and feel quite excited about and other things take longer to understand.

This week the focus has been on using tone to build atmosphere into your work. I am now looking at some of the work I have on my wall ('Wairua' for example) and seeing things I would do differently next time


But I am thrilled with my work the other day (now 7 weeks into the course). It seems to take me a lot longer than the suggested times as I am only working with one hand at the moment as the other has to be in a sling when i am upright because the tendons and nerves are so stuffed and it is too painful to have unslung (so to speak) Slowly growing in consistency in the quality of my work and enjoying the explorations...