I fixed up today to work next week with a live model. I do attend a life-drawing group every week, but the use of a model has not been a regular part of my practice in the past. Some of my compositions in the series of images I painted dealing with Italian experience in the Great War were aided by the involvement of neighbours and family members. Also I did involve a friend and neighbour during the preparation of my piece on the theme of The Owl Service. This is relatively unfamiliar territory.
Probably a major reason for this is that human figures don’t often feature in my compositions. I have learned in the past, however, that without reference to models my figure-drawing can be weak. Anxious as I am to get this right, I approached a friend and fellow artist with my request, and she very kindly accepted. It will be an interesting experience …. and I hope a valuable one.
I have just worked out a collection of ideas following along the line of my Beyond series. Some time back I started what I expected would become a group of related images on the theme of “Creation”. I guess that you could say that I completed two and a half of these before stalling. Today I got back to moving the “half” along towards completion, and it would be good to keep up the momentum. Coming to think of it, the idea I had in the back of my mind for the next piece in this group will also involve figures …. on this occasion a group of three of them. So this could become a habit. We’ll see how it goes!