Playing with mylar

In the context of a course with Thomas Hendry at the Toronto School of Art, I had the opportunity to draw with charcoal on mylar. I first learned about mylar from drawings by Sophie Jodoin and Mary Borgman.

Mylar is slippery, smudges easily, picks up underlying textures (in my case, the worn out board from the TSA), absorbs the oil from the kneadable eraser creating a different surface texture (leaving traces of the drawing’s development, as Thomas pointed out). It was messy and hard to control!

I had given myself the permission to do a bad drawing which was really necessary here for me to let go. And the drawing was disastrous for the first hour. But finally, with Thomas’ guiding hand, I managed to get something out of it. I certainly did not get anywhere close to the beautifully subtle drawings that Sophie Jodoin gets from it. I will try again!

This drawing is very large for me at 24×36 and I ran out of time.

The White Pine

Don, John, Elaine and I painted in Colonel Danforth Park last Sunday. Here is what I painted. The White Pine, 9×12

Helen at the TSA

The model today was Helen. The top drawing is from the long pose this afternoon where I only stayed for half the session. It’s a good likeness of her and I’m happy with the drawing but I wish I had drawn it larger — the face is only about 10cm and I completed it too fast. At that size, I was afraid that if I kept on fussing with it, I would ruin it.

The drawings below it are 5-15 min poses from the morning session.

Drawings of Phlip

From the TSA last night.