Day 191

Study: Chocolate Roulade
with Strawberry
57.5 x 35.5 cm
Oil on Linen over Panel
(Maybe finished)

First up on the first day of the rest of my painting life is this mouth-watering North African Swiss Roll, otherwise known in the informed circles to which I have only sporadic access, as Chocolate Roulade. Splendid subject. The sole aim was to get in front of the easel, get a head wafting full of linseed oil and lay down paint for many long hours, thinking as little as possible about what was going on. All went according to plan over the 9 hour session, though, I can't quite decide whether to leave it as is so the painting spends the night on the fridge shelf and the sumptuous subject under the fishbowl (just so it thinks its under continuous scrutiny and stays fresh). As it happens, there'll be no painting on it tomorrow, when I'll be otherwise engaged in the last weekend of The Big Draw for most of the day (10am-6pm). My particular venue will be focussing on the figure. Surprise. Looking forward to some sustained study after the swift 5, 10, 15 and 25 minutes studies on Tuesday evenings. Drawing subject aside, it was very very good to be working with paint after so long. Not sure where I am with all the new direction I was so preoccupied with leading up to the hiatus, but my thinking is that I need to get on with the painting or get even busier with wasting away. No brainer, that. And that's just the ticket.

Day 190 (3 weeks on...)

Charcoal Study: Head 1
70 x 50 cm
Charcoal on Paper

So! Having received a torrent of emails expressing both hate and dismay, I needed to get something up. Besides it grew ever-tedious explaining the hiatus. One little broken rain gutter cascaded into a minor residential refurb and re-order and thousands of dollars worth of damage control and reparations. Since we needed scaffolding for the gutter and cornicing repairs - it made sense to do just about everything else we could imagine to the outside front of the house that might benefit from scaffolding. Bit it didn't stop there. Once the tools came out of the storage cupboards taking over the living space, they couldn't really go back until as much as possible was checked-off of a long and growing list. I'm now at long last to point where I can resume my studio work saving the small miscellaneous tasks for weekends and non-painting down time. Through it all, I have managed to remain committed to the Tuesday evening figure drawing sessions and these are refreshing on many levels. There is a long 8-hour session this weekend that I'm hoping to attend. Obviously, all this cheating on my studio still life studies is raising internal alarms about the immediate direction of the work as I creep back up on it. Of course, I'm ignoring these alarms and saying yes to it all. Will there be some figurative painting here in the not-too-distant future? Likely. Does this mean the still life studies and potential outdoor work are fancies of the past? Well, since my window-box and refridgerator are populated with subjects dying to take the stand - I don't think so. On other fronts, saw a surprisingly interesting retrospective of John Everett Millais last weekend. When I say surprising I mean there was far more to the man than the Pre-Raphaelite movement he co-founded. His body of work filled room after room in the Tate Britain. Rarely one to be enamoured with so-called detail and fussy tiny brush work, I couldn't help but be inspired by the veritable lifetime of work on display - especially later on when he loosened and untucked his cravatte a bit. It bears mentioning that, to date, he remains the youngest ever student to be admitted to the Royal Academy - at the tender age of 11. And judging by the prodigious drawings he did at 9 or 10, it could have been even earlier. I read somewhere that "no amount of paint can ever make a bad drawing - or bad idea for that matter - a good one." Ain't it the truth. I started back today by taking a good long squinting grimacing look at myself in the mirror and threw charcoal and chalk around until blue-black dusty stalagtites dropped from my ample nostrils. Looking forward to 2nd gear tomorrow.

Day 189

Figure Study 1.0
70 x 50 cm
Charcoal Paper
(20-minute and under poses)

It seems it's been a month of Sundays since I last posted. I've been having one of those times where given more than about 1-and-a-half things to do all becomes a spiralling cyclone of agitation. Last week was rather more challenging than I was expecting with loads more time required of the framing and show preparations than anticipated - as usual. The show itself was a success for me on most levels despite the lack of sales of the displayed work. I did however trade cheque for painting in the backroom by prior arrangement, finding a grand new home for the large Pomegranate from Day 54 in March. Other exciting stuff of the last week included a last-ditch chance to see the Impressionists By-the-Sea show at the Royal Academy. This was a dazzling collection of all the usual suspects (Monet, Boudin, Courbet, Corot) along with a few surprises in the way of Whistler, Jongkind and Pelouse. Courbet's palette, particularly the cerulean, was simply charged with a vibrance I wasn't expecting for his period and the loose but fine brushwork of Boudin was as mind-boggling as ever, if lost a little whenever things were scaled up. Maybe this was due to the leisure of finishing indoors. Not sure. Apart from the the show I participated in and this one I enjoyed viewing, I've begun attending some drawing sessions to re-discover and re-nourish long neglected skills in understanding the figure. I'm hoping to translate these efforts into a figurative direction later in the winter but needed to get into the drawing now to better prepare me for all of that to come in a few months - See (1, 2, 3) The sessions are serious but relaxed - and still a little pacey - with professional models, artists and beginners all toiling away to a soft eclectic playlist of music. I shouldn't think I'll be populating Agitated Realism with many more of these accounts (may begin another figure-specific blog or section of my website) but wanted to show something of my time in the past umpteen days. Forgive us...Oh... And one other slightly MAJOR preoccupation that I've been hiding from my intimate readership over the last couple of months is the tiny matter of my beloved and I being wholly and utterly blessed with the gift of unplanned mid-life pregnancy(!!!) Yes. And as with any mid-life pregnancy it comes with many screening tests, scans and other nerve-wracking precautions. But by this time next week we'll know a whole lot more about just how delightfully wacky our already-nutty world will get come April 3rd. So. There it is. I've gone and typed it. Palette knives crossed, there'll be much more to follow on this. Also more painting is on the near-distant horizon to go along with the crash-course to end all crash-courses on multi-tasking and sleeplessness. My, my, my!