So this semester I am doing Suzi Blu's Goddess & Poet workshop. More realistic faces, but still a little stylised. I also enrolled in Piety & Passion. Piety looks at the Tudor era and concentrates on the 3/4 facial view. It looks tough. I'll just stick to the full frontal until I have mastered that...lol
One thing that totally shocked me when starting up this art malarkey was that it isn't like riding a bike! You have to retrain your hands to recreate what your eyes and brain see. I used to be able to sit down and sketch almost anything. Not brilliantly, mind you, but it was ok. NOW... well now nothing seems to work anymore. Or is that just me getting older? Whatever it is, it's pretty frustrating. I have sheets and sheets of practice features, shading practice, gray scale values and am now looking at everything working out where the highlights lie and where the darkest points are!!!
This was my first attempt at a more realistic face. Not great. Mucho mucho wrong with her. But she will have lots of colour added. She has a coat of clear gesso and stuck into my journal. I can fix the bad bits so I just decided to go with it! It'll be good to look back and see how she has progressed. And if it all goes horribly wrong I can rip out the page hahaha
Much happier with this sketch. Again she needs colour. She is on wood and will be finished in the last lesson. That's one thing that slightly freaks me out about the Suzi workshops. We start something and then have to put it to one side and start working on something else. It messes with my methodical brain! I like things to be in the correct order. I start working on something and I like to finish it before making a start on the next project. But I'm embracing this new method of working (well trying to!!!) and I'll go with the flow. Even if that flow is disordered and freaking me out...ha!
Next we have the twins... strange and stranger! This piece is all about working with colour and graphite. No clear gesso on this so the colour will merge with the graphite to create a lovely grey hue. This photo shows the graphite and a little cream coloured pencil.
By adding in some brown shading and some red lips they are starting to come to life. They need a lot more colours to be added but in true Suzi form we leave them and move onto something else....WAAAAAAHHHHH!
Meet Faith. She will have LOTS of colour and minimal amounts of graphite. Here I have started the shading with pink. I think we may actually get to finish her without moving onto something else. I hope so. My brain is struggling lol
She's starting to look like a real Goddess isn't she? I work much easier with predominately coloured pencil. It's right in my comfort zone.
She has some flowing locks. I don't do hair too well. Something to add to my practice list!!!
And this is more or less where she is right now. Hair and body blocked in with paint. I have worked on the eyes a little. So I'm now at the point where my comfort zone is gone and we're working with paint. paint scares me. I think its because its pretty new to me and I haven't quite figured out how to control the dratted paint brush. MORE practice!!!
Til next time
Maria x
omg, you are way ahead of me on this workshop! the ladies are looking lovely!!!! Keep up the good work!
anita
x
Posted by: anita | 17/05/2010 at 12:50