Landscape of Virginia

It's possible for hope to come into one's life at anytime at all. Sometimes it comes from love, sometimes it may come from an overwhelming joy of gratitude from an accomplishment, in any case drawing well is one of those times when hope of doing something of lasting worth comes into my life. Sometimes it happens when drawing from the model and recently it's been happening in my drawing in life modeling class at Mc Guffey. I am certainly in debt to such good and interesting models that are willing to reveal themselves for all that they are to be drawn. I think it's great that this can be done and to be done weekly truly is amazing to me.

I am thrilled to take part in a life drawing class at the local art center. We have nice young men and women who are willing to drop all to give we artist subjects from which to develop our art. How wonderful it is, for but a few dollars we receive our inspiration for our paintings and we improve our eye/hand coordination which improves our ability to create what we want to create. It's a joy to participate every week in this class. True I am tired once I arrive after a full day of working at my day job but I still find no matter how tired I am it does the trick for improving my artistic abilities. Happy are we who are gifted with this drawing group. Draw on!

When someone is working from a model one does a number of drawings in a sitting. Hopefully one can get many works from which one can draw upon at a later time when one is faced with the canvas. This is the result of working from one nice young woman who enjoyed the tattoo covering of herself which I didn't mind in some senses and in others it seem to be a hard body to read because the drawings upon her skin where difficult to work with in the drawing of them. They got in the way of me seeing her bodies shape and form many times but such it is.

  The Spring breezes blew their winds as I painted this oil on Belmont Ave here in Charlottesville the other day, it's red betrays the deep red of brick in the house's walls, while details took some time to develope it turned into a quite good painting. I can say it was enjoyable to make it standing on the sidewalk as people walked by and said hello and how much they enjoyed seeing me paint. One person even asked me if I were that famous artist painting this city? I couldn't say that I was famous but I could say that I've been painting this town for a good number of years now. But I did suggest to them that it may be the case that they were confusing me with someone more in the news like Edward Thomas or Phil Geiger, but that was not for me to decide. It was fun though, I got in four hours on the first sunny day and two and a half hours on the very next day before I could call it done and sign it.

Working from the female form is always a real joy for me, it's so beautiful and interesting in the results that come from it's definition in line. This drawing is an example of how I enjoy my work while defining it. My time spent is one done mostly in silence while drawing and most times those who work from the model around me would wish me to be even more- so on the silent side of life. But here is where the work is getting more defined and fun for me to see what does the human being size, shape and even color come from and where to they go as it the shadows created by said form. I am hoping to continue my search and I will keep all of you viewers posted.