I’ll have a few paintings in this upcoming art show held by the Ontario Plein-Air Society. All the paintings in the show must be plein-air paintings, in other words, painted on location in the great outdoors.
For more info, see their press release. OPAS is a new group open to all plein-air painters, both amateur and professional.
I went landscape painting after class again last Friday. It was very windy and I had to attach both of my bags to my easel to keep it from flying off. And it was so cold! I only lasted about two hours, but managed to paint this small study.
Cool Fall Day
West Humber Parkland, Toronto
oil on board
8×10
Fall colours are irresistible to plein-air painters! Here are a few recent paintings.
Saturday, I went out to Rouge Park with the Ontario Plein-Air Society. I found a secluded spot along the Little Rouge River and completed this study in four hours.
The Little Rouge
Rouge Park, Toronto
oil on board
9×12
This second one was done last Friday after teaching my morning class at Humber College. The college is happily situated near trails along the Humber River, who’s muddy waters inspired this painting.
The Muddy River
Humber River, Toronto
oil on board
8×10
Here are some recent drawings. The top one is of Denis, drawn at Brian Smith‘s studio on Tuesday afternoon. It was a 3h sitting.
These next ones are from the TSA last Sunday morning. I haven’t drawn for a while, so it was a bit rough. Here are the best of the session. The model is Anthony. I had planned to practice drawing the face, but Antony gave me his back view for most of the session!
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This Summer, I took Werner Zimmerman‘s Master Class in Anatomy. I had heard so many good things about Seneca’s life drawing teacher, that I was thrilled to see the Master Class being offered and signed up right away. I wasn’t disappointed! Werner is a generous, passionate and dedicated teacher who knows the body inside and out.
Here I am with my ecorche figure in progress. We used small plastic skeleton models that are very unstable and they eventually broke under the weight of the clay. It was fun putting it together before it broke, and the tactile experience of placing muscles on a skeleton was very valuable.
Werner organized two day trips for us, the first being the most exciting: we went to the Human Anatomy lab at Guelph to handle and draw from cadavers. We could lift some of the superficial layers of muscles to examine those underneath, or push them around to see how they fit into one another. It’s hard to appreciate how compact and tight muscle bundles are and how tough tendons are when just looking at books. We also went to Guelph’s bone room, which holds a large collection of animal skeletons.
Here are a few of the drawings completed during the workshop. I have more, but I didn’t have the patience to photograph them because it would require re-aligning layers of tracing paper over original newsprint drawings of the figure.
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