I bought these DVDs by Herman Pekel and Alvaro Castagnet last week. They are great, their styles are similar, loose and full of expression. I’m not so sure I want to be so free but then again maybe I am heading that way, who knows. Very busy at work at the moment, not much time to paint. I’m looking forward to having more time again at the end of the month.
Author: meldrum
My name is David Meldrum. I am an Artist who loves watercolour.
Here is a selection of watercolour and pencil sketches from my life drawing evening at Konstnärshuset, Stockholm. I hope to transfer the energy and freshness of these sketches into my paintings which are all too often, stiff and laboured.
Ten minute nude. 20130910 |
Five minute nude. 20130910 |
Five minute nude. 20130910 |
Ten minute nude. 20130910 |
Two minute nude. 20130910 |
Two minute nude. 20130910 |
I paint these Naked Hands at lunch time, I take my time and invariably I overwork them, I get scared, I have too much time to think, I dab the brush 100 times too many. Life drawing is different, there I have only five or ten minutes to execute the watercolour, the result is a painting that contains life and energy. I am learning, in the mean time; here is a muddy, overworked Naked Hand.
Naked Hand 20130910. 9 x 14 cm Moleskin. |
I was very excited about attending my first life drawing evening after the summer break. It was a two hour pose at, “The Swedish Academy of Realist Art“. I was a bit too eager and so my watercolour study failed, luckily I didn’t give up and managed to do one half-decent sketch. The model’s underarm does not look correct but otherwise I’m quite pleased with it.
figure drawing 20130905 |
I used Arches 300gsm rough paper originally which is wonderful to paint on if you have time but is too slow-drying for figure painting with tempo. I don’t think my fellow artists would appreciate me using a hair drier every ten minutes either.
It sounds like one of those bad newspaper headlines. As for the watercolour which took me two lunch breaks, – it’s all right, I learned a few things which is the point of drawing and painting these in the first place. I’m happy enough with the result, a mixture of success and failure.
Life Drawing starts again tomorrow, I’m really looking forward to starting, it feels like it was a very long time ago since the last session.
Naked hand holds stopwatch! 9 x 14 cm Moleskin. |
Naked Hand Failures
…and one backwards. The last week has been a bit of a backward step for me. Seven days ago, I thought I had mastered it, watercolouring. I was silly of course to think this way. I was painfully reminded that I am in fact a student of art. My last four watercolours have been flops, very frustrating. This quick watercolour below, which I painted this evening may mean that I am starting to move in a forward direction again. What a relief if this is the case, but then again, I haven’t started my next watecolour yet, so we will see.
Moleskin watercolour notebook, 13 x 20.5 cm. |