Drawing the Nude

Life Drawing at the AGO

The last few weeks I have been going to the drop in life drawing session at the Art gallery of Ontario. It's in a really super space. The room is huge with a very high ceiling and they have several classes going on at the same time and the life drawing is at the centre of it all. What I like is being able to walk around during the break and see what the people in the painting classes are doing. It's a great atmsophere and I have already met some very nice people.

My life drawing is pretty rusty but even after a few weeks I can feel it starting to come back. I have posted a photo here of one of the pages from today's session. Because the poses are very quick, the average lasting around 5 mins, I like to do several on a page. I'm not concerned about making something pretty, it's just a matter of getting something down. You may wonder what all the marks are across the figure, well it's just to break up the shapes and if I do a lot of images on the same page it starts to build interesting patterns. It's great to be back drawing again after all the goings on of the last few months.

No Naked Walls-

and now twitter

I spent yesterday getting myself on twitter. Everything I have read says that it is a must to be on and that social media is going to be huge in the coming years. I'm not yet convinced but I thought I should dive in and see where it leads. Doing a custom page, which the experts say you really need to make it stand out from the millions, was quite difficult for me and I found it hard to find simple instructions on how to go about twitter customization. Most of the instructions on the web assume a pretty good understanding of photoshop however after a day of playing around I learned a lot. I used the painting Jazz 1 as a backdrop but this may change. Any comments would be appreciated plus your feelings about the use of social media. Oh, my twitter page is susanneclarkart

Painting and Printmaking:
My New Studio Space

It may be on the small side but it's still great to have my own studio space. My first project will be to try printmaking on board instead of paper. I have primed a nice smooth board and I'm working on what I want to put on it. It's been hard to get into the studio with so much else going on since we moved here. Our non paying tenant in Atlanta finally left and we have re-let the house so now we can move on with our life.

Creative Block

I have my studio set up again and I have everything ready to go but I am finding it hard to get the creative juices flowing.

Our life has been very stressful since leaving Atlanta. The woman to whom we let our lovely home when we left, and who we thought was a very nice person, promptly stopped paying the rent and would not answer emails or phone calls. It turns out that despite the reference checks we did that she is a real con person, liar and thief who has been ripping people off for years. She has been served a dispossessary 16 times in the last eight years for not paying rent but has evaded paying any money back by knowing how to play the system. She told us one lie after another and now owes us thousands of dollars and yet she is still in the house and will not leave. We are in the process of evicting her and have a court case coming up in a few weeks time. She has a good job and can afford to pay but just takes advantage of people instead. She has a daughter of 17 and when I told my kids the story they were horrified at what a bad mother she is and what a dreadful example she is setting for her daughter. As they said, no matter how smart she thinks she is, in her quiet moments the knowledge of what she has become will always be there. It's very sad.

So all of this has made it hard to focus on being creative. I am hoping that it will all be over in a week or so and that I can get on with my life and art making. I did buy a fun winter hat today and found a $10 note on the way home so I took that as a good omen!

Paint, Paint and More Paint!

I have been painting solidly for three days but not the sort of painting that I like doing. The house we have moved into has a laundry in the basement and it was very messy. I have spent the past three days cleaning and scrubbing everything, scraping off old paint on the concrete painted floor and then giving the floor three coats of paint. It's difficult when you have to work around a washer and dryer and a huge shelving unit. For the walls, I started off using some paint that was left here in the house. I was trying to be ecologically green and not throw left over paint into the garbage but I got more than I expected! It was a green that I thought would look fresh however once I got it up it on a couple of walls I decided it was an awful shade and would make me really mad every time I went down there. That's the thing with acrylic paint. It always dries darker than it looks when wet and being an artist I should have remembered that. There was only one solution, add in lots of while and redo the two walls I had already done. It looks a lot better now but still a bit greener that I would have liked. By tomorrow it should be finished and I can get into my studio and do some real painting

Queen West Art Crawl and the Art Show in Trinity Bellwoods Park.

Everything came together for this art show. The weather was absolutely fantastic bringing huge numbers of people out into the park to enjoy the art, food and atmosphere. The quality of the art shown was very good and there were really interesting food vendors. Just across from me was a stall selling spring rolls, dumplings, fish balls and meat things on a skewer. They did a roaring trade. Alongside was a very theatrical popcorn maker who continually had crowds around him as his huge pan began popping up a storm. There were also musicans playing in various areas around the park and they had chosen them well. My favourites among the people who played near me were the gypsy band with it's feverish music that had everyones feet tapping and a couple who played great jazz. I took some photos of the two jazz players as reference material for some future musical paintings. I met some great people and was honoured by the ones who decided to buy my work. I would gladly do this show again.

Tent Broken Into at Festival

I forgot to mention in my last post that someone liked my paintings so much at the Junction Art Festival that he broke into my tent overnight to steal them. He got away with one and dropped another as he made his getaway. Because I was the only artist targeted I have decided to take it as a compliment!

Trinity Bellwoods Art Show

This art festival is where I will be this weekend. It's part of the Queen West Art Crawl in an exciting gallery area of Toronto. It's a big show with some 250 artists participating. Taking part in these three shows has been quite exciting and has taken my mind off all the things that have gone wrong during our move back to Toronto. It has been an extremely stressful time with all the usual problems that occur when you move from one country to another plus being let down by someone we really trusted. However in the greater scheme of things we are really lucky and shouldn't be complaining about things that will pass. The weather looks as if it will be great and my eldest son will be here for a visit.