Life Drawing Resurgence in Brisbane

This year I have returned to life drawing with a vengeance and it seems I am not the only one. There appear to be groups of artists all over Brisbane who are also returning to the source, as it were, of basic drawing skills and anatomy.

I have been asking myself why this is happening right now. In my own case it is an enduring love of the old masters and a wish to emulate those red chalk drawings of musculature, curves and angles and a wish to improve my observation skills while finding some reality as strong source material.

Fitting one's life into computer-screen-sized segments takes its toll and for an artist it is very confining.  Your whole life and relationships must be filed and fitted into these little black rectangles. They are black holes more like...

For other artists I can only surmise that their motivation is similar to mine. I have talked to so many at these different groups and the general consensus is that people are over conceptual, video, and abstract art are wanting return to some basic skills.

As artists we use every resource available to us and we need to. Ultimately there must be a devotion to truth in one's work and we need to cultivate a kind of emotional honesty even if the work is just for ourselves alone. (And it usually isn't) There is a truth in a drawing of the human body and artists through history have returned again and again to the human form. I guess the "human condition" generally is our ultimate subject matter.

The acquisition of skills is of course another reason we keep going back to drawing the figure. Skill was such a dirty work in curatorial and art college circles for such a long time but now hopefully the pendulum is swinging back a little.

Another thing is that life drawing is addictive. Getting into that semi-meditative right-brain state is a truly great feeling. The world exists in that eye-brain-hand connection and for that moment that is all there is. Working from photographs as source material does not provide this connection, not to mention the flattening and distortion that photos engender.

Having said all that I intended this blog to be a bit of a run down about what is currently available in Brisbane.

Firstly a few random drawings.

Almost all sessions start with quick one minute poses to warm up.

Another sheet of random one minute poses.

Then five or ten minute poses.

Sometimes longer poses generally up to about 20 minutes.

Sessions currently available in Brisbane that I have personally checked out. 

All are untutored -   (There are also plenty of groups around with a teacher but I have no personal experience of them.)

Monday -    6.30-  9.30 pm at the Brisbane Institute of Art. Windsor . This untutored session run by Alan is very well organised, runs on time, even breaks are timed. Well set up, friendly group full of old hands. No music (which can be a good thing as personal tastes vary) Bring your iPod.  $15

Tuesday  - There are several groups in private homes that I know of so if you know me I can give you details.

Wednesday   7-9 pm at the Art Factory, South Brisbane. This is a very large group run efficiently by Dr Manny from the Art Shed. There are three separate large classrooms (Brisbane State High School Art Dept.)  with three different models who rotate rooms so you get to draw all three over the session. Untutored. Music is generally a pretty mellow mix of Greek and World music. Tea, coffee and a biscuit provided during the break. $10

Thursday     6.30 - 9.30 pm at Sculptor's Queensland Shed in the grounds of the Old Museum on Gregory Tce. This is my favourite. Very friendly group and everyone takes wine or snacks to share. Run by Val. Punctual and organised. As this is a sculpture shed this is probably the one where you could make most mess. All the sessions are pretty much drawing so therefore not terribly messy but at this one you definitely could use a bit of clay or paint without any problem. The lighting in the studio is quite dramatic and as a painter I love the strong cast shadows. Music is ABC Classic fm radio which I love.  $15,  $12 if you join the society.

Friday    10.30 am - 1.30 pm. Royal Queensland Art Society's new premises on Petrie Tce.  This one is one long pose for the entire session. One week nude model, next week clothed for portrait/costume study.

Run by Glen and Peter. Friendly group. Music is CD's people put on so it can vary.  $15,  $12 for members.

Saturday     10.30 -4 pm  Atelier studio in Salisbury. Very professional outfit. There is tutoring at this one but you can just do your own thing if you wish. One long pose for the whole session. In fact the same pose is held for five weeks so you can do a detailed study. No other group offers this possibility. Large range of people and skills at this one, from beginners to very experienced and some old hands too. $6 per hour untutored.


I must just finally mention the holy grail of life drawing in at the BIA on Wednesday mornings. David Paulson, who enjoys something of a cult following, is teaching again at this one. Many of us have benefited from watching his amazing facility with the pencil when he demonstrates. Three generations of my own family have in fact done so, - my mother artist Joan Bauer (now dec.) myself and my daughter bridal couturier Sarah Alice Andrews.
But you now have to enrol for the term for this tutored one.

Holbein's "Portrait of an Unknown Woman"

This is a photo of my studio wall and I would like to point out the image centre right of the woman in white fur tippet and cape holding a squirrel and with botanical detail of plant tendrils on a flat blue background. I have lived with this image among the others as inspiration for a good while now. So imagine my delight to find a novel written about it.

I have just finished reading this novel by Vanora Bennett ( Harper 2007) and I can highly recommend it to lovers of art and of portrait painting in particular. It is set in 1527 when the artist Hans Holbein is in London to paint the family of Thomas More. As an artist I find such novels gleefully inspire me, filled as they are with the minutiae of the artists' life. There is always something to glean about how these great paintings were put together even if it comes from the imagination of a novelist. Dwelling on these little snippets does find its way somehow into my own practice.

This is the completed painting of the family and circle of Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein. Although there are a couple of versions, the one at the top has an extra figure at the left and Bennett's novel revolves around the notion that this woman Meg Griggs is also the woman in his famous painting "Portrait of an Unknown Woman".

This is also known as "Woman with squirrel and starling". It does look amazingly like the figure in the group portrait and Bennett invents a plausible narrative to explain all the symbolism and inclusions.

I have admired Holbein's portraiture for many years. His sheer skill is laudable and he used all the technical resources of Renaissance naturalism that were at his disposal. The textures of skin, hair, fabrics and fur etc. have a high degree of verisimilitude. Also there is an unusual stillness, precision and clarity about his work and an objectiveness and dignity about his subjects. There is never any emphasis on the fleeting or captured expression. His work is far too serious for that. He reserves any sense of playfulness for symbolic inclusions.  His faces are quite flat though which I suspect is the result of working from his portrait drawings as source material for his paintings. It seems to me that he "filled in" with colour in the absence of his models.

This image of Thomas More is a tour de force and there does exist a drawing also exactly the same of the face.

To get back to the novel, the whole plot revolves around the circle of Thomas More. Bennett even rewrites her own version of what happened to the princes in the tower. She also introduces some interesting theories about Holbein's famous painting The Ambassadors" (The French Envoys) 

There has of course been a lot of scholarship about this painting and a book on my shelves called "The Ambassadors' Secret" by John North (Phoenix 2002) is as yet unread by me. ( I am promising myself to get to it soon especially after this book.) Bennett's theory about the memento mori of the distorted skull in the foreground is that it actually means "Remember More" (as in Thomas)!

Baby Portrait

This beautiful little boy was only three months old when he (unbeknownst to him) sat for his portrait. I usually work from life but in this case had to use photography for source material for the oil on canvas painting. In cases such as this I always take my own photos. I took 83 photos in this case. We had morning coffee with the parents and I just snapped away, hoping I was capturing what I was looking for.

What I was looking for was an alert and happy engaging expression but not a smile and subtle lighting to give the head some three dimensionality. Baby's Dad is behind him and that is Mum's coffee on the right.

Such a beautiful little boy, I had some some anxiety about doing him justice. I must also say this is one of the most difficult things I have ever done. In such a young subject everything is subtlety. There are no strong bones or features at this age on which to "hang" a likeness. We are pretty happy with it though.

Portrait Studies in Oil

I thought I would post these portrait studies I did  few months ago. I am having a tidy up of my studio drawers and I realised I had not even photographed these. They are all just studies done in about 2 hours each, all done alla prima from the model. There is nothing particularly special about any of them but looking back at them now, I think they are better than I thought they were. Certainly worthy of a blog post.

Art Book Discoveries at the Lifeline Book Fair

Here is a photo of my latest acquisitions for my Art Book library. The piece de resistance is the 4cm thick volume of Leonardo's anatomical drawings, many of which were borrowed from Queen Elizabeth's collection. The book was published in 1952 and I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it before. Only a few of the images were familiar. The same ones that are always shown but there is is a wealth of riches in this book.

 I will probably do some drawing copies from it. I am really getting more into anatomy and going to life drawing a couple of times a week. In fact, I am devoting this year to such studies.

Another amazing find is a book of etchings and engravings called "The School of Fontainebleau" by Henri Zerner. It contains graphic work by Fantuzzi and Jean Mignon in a Mannerist style. They were working for François 1 in France from about 1530. These works are both ultra sophisticated and yet naive.

Here are a couple of pages.

I also scored a copy of "The Spirit of Britain - A Narrative History of the Arts"  by Roy Strong who has been a Director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert in London.

Another more obscure discovery was a book about an Estonian artist called Malle Leis. A Google search didn't reveal much but there is some synchronicity with my own work so I will keep looking for more of her.

Plenty of looking and reading fun ahead. And lots of tea drinking on my studio couch...

"Portrait of Madame X"

There are many painters for whom John Singer Sargent's "Portrait of Madame X" is the ultimate in sophisticated society portraiture. Shown at the 1884 Paris Salon it created a sensation in its day and notoriety for its subject.

The story is well known.
I have just finished a book however, a novel called

"I am Madame X" by Gioia Diliberto published by Scribner in 2003 which presents a fictionalised account of the story from the point of view of the painting's subject -  American beauty Virginie Gautreau. The amazing and very clever thing about the book is that you truly forget you are reading a novel. It seems rather that  this is Virginie's own true account of events. and you are lulled into believing you are reading facts.

For artists and art lovers the book can be devoured for its descriptions of the Paris of the Belle epoque and the details of fashionable salons and artists' ateliers. There are characterisations of several real people, Sargent of course and Carolus Duran his teacher and Dr Pozzi who was also immortalised by Sargent in paint. Also a couple of female artists are included. Filomena Seguette is loosely based on the artist Rosa Bonheur, although she reminded me of an painter version of novelist George Sand with her male attire.

Diliberto has apparently used the sketchy facts of Gautreau's life as a blueprint but the whole thing is just so believable.

I enjoyed the sections about the Salon itself about works "on the line" or being "skied" with work hung so high it was barely visible. These anecdotes provide authenticity and I simply soak up anything about the daily lives of artists from that period.

Just for interest I have taken these photos from my other Sargent book by Carter Ratcliffe which shows some of the preliminary drawings Sargent did of Virginie.

This one juxtaposes the two finished paintings. The one on the right with the wine glass is a bravura piece of painting and the novel weaves the circumstances of its creation cleverly into the story.

I highly recommend  the book for fellow artists.

Portrait of Tom finished

My portrait of Tom finished. There are progress shots in an earlier blog post. It was painted Alla Prima in about 5 sittings of about an hour each. It is a good likeness and he is very happy with it. It is just a practice piece really. I wanted to have a go at the Rembrandt triangle of light on the left cheek. It is just on a loose piece of canvas, unstretched  so it will be cropped a bit when it is stretched or framed. 

The other challenge I set myself was to paint a dark head against a light background which is the opposite of the tried and tested old master look of a light head and collar against a very dark background. I have two other portraits I am working on and the results will be posted soon.