FACEPOCALYPSE

The sketch group for sketching. As a group. In Perth. has been born kicking! Created yesterday and it’s already held an event. People have been talking about getting regular sketch groups going in Perth for ages, and now it’s happening. The group had its first meetup today, which was basically Jeff and I telling everyone we were meeting at Hyde Park to draw/paint, and anyone else interested was welcome.

I bet Jeff that noone else would come.

I was pleasantly surprised when 3 other people came along, 2 of which were complete strangers to Jeff and myself! Thus is the power of the interwebs.

And here is a picture – Party of 5 (incl me)!

We’ll probably make Saturdays a regular thing so join the group if you want to join us.

I used the opportunity to do a watercolour painting for Mother’s Day. I referenced a black and white Daily Mirror (Sydney) newspaper clipping from 1985, just after I was born. Mum and I made page 5 with a very punny article entitled “Boxer’s a champ at just eight pounds.”

I went to Dr Sketchy’s last night to draw and paint Celestina from the Melbourne performance group Eccentrix. For those not familiar with the Dr Sketchy format, there’s a handful of quick poses, a break, then a model performance and some longer more poses.

This particular model’s “specialty” was fire with some sort of ~sensual wiggling~ similar to bellydancing, and during her performance she had flaming things (?) on her shoulders and arms… And I just realised I don’t know what they’re called. They were kind of like little poles with a flammable piece on the end.

Anyway, I’m not sure whether it was the way she moved, the bright flames dancing around, or the fact that I was ridiculously tired that sent me into a light trance, but it was hypnotic! One of the best Dr Sketchy’s performances I’ve seen.

And here are some watercolours. This was a 15min pose with greenish lighting:

I want to study the affects of coloured lighting more as some of the shadows were kind of orangey. My colours are exaggerated though.

Here’s one of the earlier 10 minute poses under orange light. I was trying to get a big patch of orangey skintone down then bleed shadows back over it. A much simpler palette, but since I didn’t get time to paint around the form and expose the white highlight I just painted a solid colour background in digitally.

Last of all, a little gift for Mel. She left her facebook signed in the other day so I did the obligatory status update. I then noticed she didn’t have anything in the “Write something about yourself” section, so it promptly became “I’m a sparkly princess YAY!”.

And without further ado, here is sparkly princess Mel:

Whipped out the watercolours for this eve’s life drawing session over at the King St Art Centre. This is actually bigger on screen than in my sketchbook, but the whole figure is A3.