Honolulu Museum of Art Figure Drawing March 9,2015 - Tom

Tom 03-09-15 Page 1, Acrylic and Ink on Paper, 9”x 12”

I was working with my three color acrylic paintings (Cad Yellow, Cad Red and Cobalt Blue). There were a couple of odd moments from this drawing session. The most notable is what I thought was rather devastating turned out to be very interesting. I forgot my drawing paper this class and had only my mixed media paper. I adapted quickly as  have done similar to these with my oil pastel drawings.

Overall these drawings look like complete pages and were easier to "complete" but I don't like them as much as my fully painted pages. 

I really like how these pages came out. I do miss my gesture pages with the ink and wash. I may do a combo of the two types of gesture drawing in future sessions.

Tom is always entertaining to draw. He usually takes very theatrical poses playing to his strengths; however this night he was taking very difficult poses. He was balancing precariously on top of furniture and really pushing his (and the classes' for that matter) comfort zone. 

In the above pose he was balanced on a collection of furniture. I like how all the poses are reading in this page. The bleed through on the earlier poses and the incomplete ares of the painting make for very interesting shapes. I think this is the most successful page of the night.

I think the longer poses make for better background drawings. I really like how the sharpie line work reads from under the washed paint.

Tom 03-09-15 Page 2, Acrylic and Ink on Paper, 9”x 12”

Marc Brown's comment for this pose was "what gear are you in Tom?" as he basically created a balance beam and perched himself on top of it.

I really like my use of gray in the arms. It's reading as a cold shadow space.

Tom 03-09-15 Page 3, Acrylic and Ink on Paper, 9”x 12”

This collection of gestures was my favorite and worked really well as a page. The dark spaces and shadows are creating some neat patterns.

This does run into a problem with this particular system. I was really attached to the gesture drawing page and did not want to obscure it with a large painting. I should have probably made the figure larger and turned the page. I was treating the drawings as delicate and then painting around it and that lead to a less effective page.

Overall good night. There were a lot of insights gained. 

The Honolulu Museum of Art Figure Drawing class is every Monday at 7PM. It is located at 1111 Victoria Street. There is a $10 class fee. 

“Come on. I don't have any problem violating my own insights in practice.” 
~ Slavoj Žižek