tomwoodartist

 

• Thursday 15th May   Jaz

• Sat & Sun 17th & 18th May 2-Day   Suki  book here 
  

• Thursday 22nd May   Fiona

• Thursday 29th May   Miriam

• Thursday 5th June   Joseph

• Saturday 7th June   Kus

• Thursday 12th June   Siobhan

• Thursday 19th June   Richard

Life Drawing Thursday 24 April 2014

Carol by Roger

 Expression, for me, does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by the figures, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything has its share.

Henri Matisse

 

Paintings and drawings by Barry, Catherine, Fiona, Hadyn, Ivan, Jane, Russell, Sandra, Sue D-Y, Sue, Tom, Tony and featured artist Roger.

Oil Painting Workshop 18, 19, 20 April

Oil painting at Redbrick Mill

 

Three Day Oil Painting Workshop at Redbrick Mill - hope you all enjoyed it.

Oil paintings by Bob, Catherine, Colin, David, Gerry, Ian, Joan, Kwan, Lois, Rob, Sarah and Sue.

 

NEXT WORKSHOP - SAT 19 & SUN 20 JULY

Pastel Making and Pastel Techniques Weekend Course

£75 materials inc. Maximum 15 places  BOOK HERE

Life Drawing Thursday 17 April 2014

 Lynn Lee by Russell

 

PLUS CA CHANGE by Russell Lumb

Great excitement amongst the artists gathered around the Studio tea table at the prospect of a new model, trailed by Gerry to Tom as Far Eastern exotic and “just gorgeous”.  No matter that Gerry’s Glaswegian description could be satisfied by a strapping fishwife from Musselborough, the various ready meals were passed through the microwave and devoured swiftly in anticipation of a blind date with Miss Saigon. And Lynn Lee did not disappoint, excepting the slight, but irrelevant matter of her antipodean accent. Beautifully-waved , shoulder length hair framing a dignified face, atop a youthfully-proportioned physique, with the promised exoticism delivered by her red mules.

My heightened interest was not, however, generated by Lynn Lee’s relative attractiveness, but by her unfamiliarity, and I suspect that my reaction was shared around the studio. With no disrespect intended, Steve, Sue, Kay and Fiona have become as familiar, if not more so, than close family members, who do not receive equal visual scrutiny. This developed relationship with a model allows for commensurately developed expression in pencil or paint, either through greater accuracy for the likeness chasers, or personality projection for the expressionists. But we all relish the challenge of new structure, colouring and character, and here was such an opportunity.

In the event, the unfamiliar sitter did not drive me, nor my companions, to a new approach; even Tom’s rare return to drawing had been planned before Lynn Lee’s arrival, and, reviewing the gallery, everyone appears to have employed tried and tested techniques. Perhaps the concentration required by a new sitter discourages experimentation. I know that I was far too concerned with “learning” this new face to even think about materials and process. Nor did I spend any time deciding between portrait and full figure, continuing my recent habit of head and shoulders, possibly resulting from a new-found regard for landscape format paintings.

So, here I am, using safe and familiar means to explore new territory. Not such a bad strategy, and in fact, even the territory is familiar; two each of eyes and ears, a single, centrally located nose and mouth and all the other constituent facial elements. It follows that all of the effort was directed toward observing and prioritising the small peculiarities which identify an individual. As an unashamed likeness chaser this is my default strategy and the surrounding context is therefore rather rudimentary. The actual context included most of the thirty postcards of my previous efforts, marshalled like guardsmen on the exhibition screen beyond. I was sufficiently aware to recognise the risk of self-reference on an epic scale and therefore happy to simplify the painting and concentrate on Lynn Lee. Prominent forehead, smoky eyes, sharp nose and small chin with a strong jawline; key features to form the basis of a portrait framed by her lustrous hair.

In the end, I made a portrait which is recognisably Lynn Lee, but disappointingly leaning toward caricature, a natural result of ticking-off the key features without relative refinement. And then there was the changing light to resolve, as the Spring evening moved from good daylight to eventual artificial illumination. This really is difficult, as shadows move and colours change, requiring the artist to chase the image until the final whistle. However, this experience can never be repeated as we now “know” Lynn Lee and can commence the process of refining our particular version of this individual over a number of sittings until she becomes as familiar as those mentioned above.

The gallery seems to echo my experience; strangely colourless and no really strong record of Lynn Lee’s presence. You can see the learning process in action, and anticipate better results as familiarity with the sitter allows more effort to be channelled into composition, context, colour and expression. Of all the work here, I think that Patrick’s powerful charcoal appeals most to me. It is not undeniably Lynn Lee, but something about the attitude of the head and the sadness of the gaze convey the experience. Carole, Hadyn and Roger make best use of the rather satisfying pose which I overlooked in favour of another portrait, and I might be tempted back to the full figure, with some sumptuous silk accessorising, next time around?         

 

Paintings and drawings by Carole, Chris, Fiona, Hadyn, Ian, Jane, Patrick, Roger, Sandra, Tom, Tony and featured artist Russell.

Life Drawing Thursday 10 April 2014

Siobhan by Ivan (detail)

 

http://www.pinterest.com/alg1269/art-quotes/

 

Paintings and drawings by Andrew, Dick, Emma, Fiona, Hadyn, Ian, Ivan, Patrick, Roger S, Sandra, Tom and Tony.

Life Drawing Thursday 5 April 2014

 

'Absence makes the heart grow fonder', I'm only sorry I wasn't there, some lovely work featuring our A-lister standing model, Steve. Usually I'm not a fan of 'vignetting', where the painting fades off before reaching the edge, but Dick's superb controlled delicate painting proves me wrong. Also I like Bren's new approach of two in one, it's effective and thought provoking, an intelligent addition to the already large lexicon of opportunities within life drawing. Not easy to come up with something new in the long and well established canon of life drawing, but Bren has opened another door to further exploration. Wish I'd been there.

Paintings and drawings by Bren, David, Dick, Gerry, Isi, Russell, Sandra and Tony.

 

Life Drawing Thursday 3 April 2014

detail of Kay by Sandra

 

So often I meditate on why we make art, what compels us to sit down and push stuff around until it appears as though something of meaning appears. It can’t be for the meagre financial rewards most artists endure; it has to be something deeper more fundamental this urge to create. Over many years as an artist I have got to know numerous artists and with some I have seen how they’ve worked. I have seen organized and systematic practices also chaotic and spontaneous methods of working, I have seen crazy people and apparently sane people all devote great chunks of their precious lives to the seemingly pointless act of shunting bits of colour around. Why, why would a person do that?

I have worked with people who tell me they have waited all their lives to sit at an easel and move paint around, I have lectured in vast halls to hundreds of people in illustrious universities (Cambridge, Yale etc.) to people who have Nobel prizes showing them pictures of surfaces clumsily covered in coloured stuff. These are people changing the world, making history and yet they sit and listen, nod and applaud at rectangles of lumpy colour, why I wonder. Surely it can’t just be politeness, maybe sympathy, maybe they recognize obsession when they see it.

I really honestly sometimes wonder why we make art. I know I’m in the thrall of paint, sticky, messy, gooey, runny, lumpy, smooth, oily paint, for me it’s all about paint. Like a drug addict becomes a connoisseur of the paraphernalia of their addiction, so I obsess about tubes versus pots, knives and scrapers sharp or blunt, to smear or to scrub, wet or dry, these things matter to the addicted artist. They are the scaffolding that holds up the day, on them are built paintings, some rickety destined to collapse; others quietly solid, bunker-like, some illusory towers never to rise from their foundations.

The more I think about it the stranger it seems to have this overwhelming desire to take coloured sticky stuff and place it on a surface whether it is at one extreme impersonating a photograph or at the other splodges of paint apparently spilt at random. But we do it and have done it so energetically and determinedly that there are vast museums built and dedicated to this stuff. I can only think of one real reason why this phenomenon has persisted and that’s because for the individual it’s a most effective way to stave off madness. I would have it that making art is a way of organizing and pacifying those troubling corners of our psyche, it gives us control when control is lost, it gives us problems which might be solved when the world seems to consist of insurmountable problems, it gives us expression to our dreams when no-one else wants to listen and it gives us time and clarity in an increasingly clamorous world. Making art is a balm and without it we would all be a little bit more bonkers. That old cliché that the artist bares their soul may well have some truth especially if we think of the ‘soul’ as a catch all phrase to mean, the inner self and the true you, the person you really are. But what balm it is, in the hands of great people that balm is transformed into a thing of magnificence and wonder, imagine a raindrop becoming the Victoria Falls and there you have it.

Paintings and drawings by Barry, Cathy, Dick, Hadyn, Ian, Jane, Patrick, Roger H, Roger S, Russell, Sandra, Sue D-Y, Tom and Tony.