We have been doing a lot of walking since the pandemic started, originally prompted by restricted exercise periods for months at a time. Now walking is a regular activity and each week we try and do a slightly longer walk. We often break this up with a coffee, in our Thermos, or at one of the pop-up coffee carts that seem to be proliferating along popular walking tracks around the city.
Covered with a nice paperbag from a local bookshop
I hate carrying too much on these walks so I now carry this home made 10×14 cm sketchbook made of paper offcuts. Here are some of my recent sketches.
The sketches are adding up!Late afternoon around Lake Tuggeranong Coffee at the pop-up coffee cart Mt Taylor. In reality the Golden Retreiver wasn’t quite that long in the body!😄A Thermos of coffee when we walked around the base of Mt TaylorPatrons at the local coffee shop, a stop on our walk around Lake Tuggeranong Bonus Black Swans with an almost fully grown cygnet.
WARNING this post contains a nude portrait. (It’s OK, it’s not me).
It seems there is a trend amongst my artist friends to be doing self portraits. So I am jumping in, along with Carol Haywood and Rose Davies to share my recent versions.
I started drawing myself in March and then quickly fell by the wayside. I recently got re-inspired by Jennifer Higgie’s book the Mirror and the Palette, looking at the herstory of the self-portrait.
Highly recommended, fascinating and a darn good read.
The portraits of older women artists are often the most experimental. Perhaps the most visceral portrait I know is by Maria Lassnig, (1919- 2014), painted in her 80’s, it really sorts the women from the boys. I saw it in Amsterdam in 2019 and it certainly hit me in the gut.
Oder du ich (You or Me) Maria Lassnig, 2005, oil on canvas , private collection.
Alice Neel has also painted an unapologetic nude self-portrait in her 80’s, which is on display in a current retrospective of her work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See here for a online veiwing of the exhibition.
You will probably be relieved to know that I don’t have the guts of Lassnig or Neel to do nude self-portraits. Maybe later. Maybe when I turn 80.
So here are the portraits I have made so far. Most, with the exception of the watercolour, have been sketched on paper roll from Ikea.
Self-portrait. Acrylic marker and brush pen.Self-portrait with watching painting. Pencil.Self-portrait Night repair. Collage and brush pen.Double self-portrait. Gel pen.Self-portrait with blue lips. Pen and ink, acrylic marker.
Last week I went to my first life drawing class of the year. We had a stand-in model, one of the class, as the booked model cancelled just before the class started.
I took the big tip from last year’s classes and bought myself a roll of paper from the kids section of IKEA for the short poses. As you can see you just keep rolling it up and over the easel.
Short sketches in coloured pencils.
For my quick poses I used coloured pencils, part of my drive to start using all those stray art materials I have hanging around.
For the longer poses I swapped over to watercolour. Our group is quite eclectic in terms of media. We ranged from pencil to digital, acrylic and watercolour.
15 minute pose, watercolour and pencil, two versions.15 minute pose, watercolour and pencil. 15 minute pose, watercolour and pencil.
leonieandrews 