finished painting

the summer holidays have begun and the heat is near unbearable already.
hope yours is a little cooler.

lessons 21 & 22

i have really enjoyed this one. being bolder than i am used too.

next week is our last class. i shall miss the structure of the course. but i have plans for next year :)

lesson 20

i havent painted from a model for such a long time and i do love it. i began this painting this morning and hope to finish next week. theres something about getting into the rhythm of a painting. i really could have sat there all day.

happy tuesday friends.

lesson 19

finished!!

lesson 18

nearly there - i am not going to 'fill in' the whole painting - i like the idea of keeping it alive.

i think the face looks rather raw but i am so proud of myself that i didnt go into all the little details. definitely a learning process. looking at it now, i realise that i have cut out half of the forehead.. to be fixed.

lesson 17

in this lesson i continued with my painting ... enjoying the bold shapes in the background..

we looked at some wonderful works of matisse and discussed how he used so much pattern in his work.

so full of life and such a major part of the paintings.

lessons 14 - 16

my first real oil painting attempt and i am in my element with this medium. i chose this photograph of my neighbour in london from quite a few years ago. i really wanted to try a portrait and i do love the details in this shot.

feeling quite hesitant in the beginning.. getting a feel for the oils and the idea of layers

this week we talked about pattern in art and how we can use it. once you start looking around you notice just how much pattern is used everywhere. and referring back to the image i am painting, its obvious that more than 50% of the picture is made up of pattern.

lesson 13

oils! this is what i have waiting for. i think i have only used oil paint once in my life. never having learnt about oils, i feel very intimidated by it and have always stuck to acrylics.
today i moved out of my safe-zone and what joy!

the exercise was to tear or/and cut up pieces of coloured paper and arrange them on a piece of white paper. and then we had to paint the composition.

i know my painting doesnt look much, but just getting used to the oils is wonderful. im really looking forward to continuing..

lesson 12

this week we took a break from painting and returned to drawing. it was a welcomed return for me. my mood called for something more relaxing.. altho it did turn into quite an intense drawing session. we began with the 2 minute drawings of each other.

then for the drawing on the left, we had to feel our face and draw (blind contour) what we were feeling. i like this idea of emphasising other senses when drawing.

our teacher posed the question: what would it be like to draw with a piece of lemon in our mouth? or our feet in a bucket of ice? how would it affect our work?
the drawing on the right was a blind contour drawing of the teacher as we used the pencil to travel across is face with the pencil.

we then had to draw a close-up of someones ear and continue to finish the head..

and on another note... this weekend we rented a wonderful film called 'once'. the music is so beautiful and the simplicity of the story set in dublin is just perfect. highly recommended!

lesson 11

a pleasant lesson painting more peppers today. i liked i liked most that my teacher said is that my painting is not so obvious.


i think we may have to give up on winter arriving here. we so need rain.

and talking of winter, many, many congratulations to sweet shari. and to another lovely friend ;). lots of love to you both.

happy tuesday friends xx

lessons 9 & 10

this is the stage i reached with my pink lady. there are quite a few problems with it. too much white paint for one thing. also i tend to lack in patience sometimes and dive in with a final colour instead of using more layers - therefore not allowing the light of the background through and not allowing the painting to 'breath'.

i didnt want to continue with it and so today continued with the next lesson.

first, a drawing of the still life - two peppers. to work out composition on the paper.

then a tonal study using only black and white paint.

and finally colour - but each time we took some paint from the pallette we only painted one stroke before taking more paint - building up the paiting in this way. it felt good to finish all three works in one session - the energy flowed from one to the other (with a short coffee break in the middle of course!)

here is the finished painting from the previous post.. i showed it to my teacher and he pointed out the amount of detail which i am aware of and would really like to avoid more. there are more problems with it but i have learnt a lot from doing it.

lesson 7 & 8

in last weeks lesson we worked on a still life - beginning with a layer of white and after it was dry added layers of colour. i was having a bad morning and it took me a while ot get into it but did enjoy the boldness and painting with a large brush - a way i dont usually work.

for yesterdays lesson we were told to bring in a photo to work with. i wasnt sure what to bring in so i bought a selection and chose the lady in pink.

we started off with some sketches to determine the the size of the painting, the format and the composition. i liked how the subject comes up quite small within the frame. i started drawing her ready for painting next week.

we also looked at the work of belgian artist luc tuymans - another new to me artist whose work i really like. he uses a lot of photography techniques in his work (cropping, close-ups and framing). i love the plains of colour and the minimalistic look his paintings have.

lesson 6

tuesday morning. i have been asking myself lately why on earth i didnt take this course years ago. i am enjoying the coffee breaks too.

this lesson we continued with colour and more specifically, complementary colours. the exercise was to paint the 3 primary colours and 3 secondary colours on the page so that they are all of the same value. when you look at the paper all colours are equal and no one colours stands out more than any other. harmony.

we then took a five minute walk to the tel aviv museum of art.

our teacher showed us some of his favourites in the permanent collection. we talked about a pierre bonnard painting, a monet and a picasso but his favourite in the whole museum is a beautiful painting by morandi and i could see why (similar to this one but each one is unique).

i was so excited so hear him talk about these works. i was also introduced to two new (for me) artists. one of them is avigdor arikha whose work i just love - reminding me of lucian freud.

the other artist ori reisman. wonderful contrasts in work.

another fantastic morning.