Frustration
This colored pencil drawing ‘Golden Shine – 21-11-22’ was drawn on a whim or was it? Today I got up with some mixed emotions. Yesterday I toiled all day long in colored pencil in order to get a facial resemblance of Melina. That’s the project I started last week in preparation for a bigger oil. Since it’s drawn on A4 and the body in full-length the space reserved for the portrait was very small. I will spare you the details but I ended up drawing with embroidery glasses on. Still didn’t get the exact resemblance right. Anyway, I went back to teaching this morning and with a student I was discussing pastel techniques. I pointed her to Toulouse Lautrec’s pastel drawings as an example of a so-called ‘loose’ style. Underhandedly I felt though, having been such a detailled nit-picker myself the other day.
Toulouse-Lautrec
But that’s how it goes. Sometimes your studens are your teachers and today I felt this urge to make up some lost time. Back in the saddle again and revive the love for quick sketching and inventing stuff. Actually I had this particular drawing of Henri in mind, called ‘Femme Qui Tire Son Bas’. That a drawing I always admired because of its seemingly incompleteness. Just like Rembrandt’s ‘Sleeping Young Woman’ no line is superfluous nor can it be omitted. Two art works to drive one mad with jealousy.
My Regular Model
Last Thursday I held another session with my regular model. This time was special because I bought myself two big studio lamps (finally!). Lucky me because I had so much better light. We had a great photo shoot and time passed quicker than I thought. There simply wasn’t time left for a drawing session. So now you know all about the whim and the inner urge. I did this drawing under two hours just to keep a rough edge. It matches earlier drawings in the Golden series so it’s yet another addition. Since I work with hatched strokes my style looks rather different than the two aforementioned artists. I suspect they kept the drawings under one hour, them crafty buggers!
Colored pencil (Faber-Castell, Caran d’Ache, Prismacolor) drawing on Talens Toned paper (28.2 x 21 x 0.1 cm)
Artist: Corné Akkers
