Our Salon Exhibit of 2009

In my drawing studio class we are having a show in the Locker B50 Gallery. This gallery is literally a locker. A student at VCU started exhibiting work in her locker; the school liked the idea and installed hard wood flooring and lights in the locker. The locker gallery also has regular hours and little receptions for each new show there. My professor got us a show in the Locker 50 Gallery. In order to get as many student works in as possible she made our drawing minimum 2 inches, either height or length, and our maximum 6 inches, either height or length. Also, we are going with a Salon theme. The Salon was an annual exhibit in Paris during the 1700's, 1800's, and 1900's, where contemporary art was on displayed. Unlike exhibits today where there is about six feet of space between each work of art, the Salon had paintings touching each other and right ontop of one another (this cramped look is another incentive to get as many drawings in the locker as possible).


To complete our miniture Salon exhibit, our drawings have to be inspired by a 18th, 19th, or 20th century French painting. My drawing is actually based off of an English painting: portrait of Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan by Gainsborough.


Here is my inspiration. I picked it because I like the feathury nature of the brushstrokes.


This is my version. It is 2 3/4 inches by 3 1/2 inches big, pen and ink. I guess what makes it contemporary is the crossed-legged position and the clothing. Otherwise, the trees and landscape are eternal (the great thing about nature!). To personalize it further, I hid seven faery faces in the drawing. Becuase it is such a small scale I don't think anyone would be able to find them without help but good luck!


See how small it is?!!!!!

My 'second' spring break.

We have been making a lot of progress in my drawing class. We finished portraits a long time ago and have moved on to the human figure. First we started with the skeleton.

This is an ink drawing or really an ink painting. It's huge; somewhere around 27" x 30". It started out as a line drawing in graphite and then I painted/hatched ink over the graphite filling in the value.

Now we are working on muscles studies. This is a "flayed" figure drawing: a drawing with no skin so the muscles are visible. We had to use muscle diagrams in order to fill in the muscles (after all, our model still had his skin on :) ). We aren't allowed to use shading or value on these drawings, yet, so the muscle fibers act as a the value and provide extra movement to the figure.

This weekend I went to Virginia Beach with my family. It was wonderfully relaxing and I didn't get any work done (much like a second spring break).


Here is the family on the beach. It got much colder so we had to wear sweaters and jackets.




We found a poor dead bird on the beach. It was lying in such a poetic pose that I felt compelled to take a picture of it.

Finally, here is something I drew in my sketchbook. Normally when I'm at the beach I draw pictures of mermaids and beachy things, but instead I drew elves and woody things. Maybe I didn't listen to enough summer or seaside music. Oh, well.