Untitled - by Jane

Figure in movement

2011-05-24T17:52:00.000+01:00

Movement and strength - figure study - very big - maybe 90 x 50cms - and charcoal on very heavy grammage of paper.... 2007?

a bientot

Jane

Fresh and Wild

2011-05-23T09:52:00.000+01:00

Just drawing .. artist and model with reflection and flowers.. charcoal, painted ground, coloured chalk. Very big. Very Quick. 2007.

a bientot
Jane

Mise en Page

2011-05-13T18:43:00.000+01:00

I must say quite like this one .. which I fished out while weeding the unruly garden of my old life drawings.. so thought to blog it.. but I cannot remember who it is or when I did it or where... never mind.

a bientot

Jane

Strong guy..

2011-05-12T08:24:00.000+01:00

A shy model, clearly, but no matter.. what he obviously made us think about was mass and muscle... and given rather a short pose, ten minutes (?) I nevertheless got interested in the complexities of those huge hands and their shadows.. a big drawing, at least A2, done in chalk pastel in 2005 in Nicosia.

a bientot
Jane

Memento mori?

2011-05-06T11:41:00.000+01:00

A diversion into a drawing from my Academy days in Brussels in which I recognise two hallmarks of that particular studio .. one is our Prof's sadistic liking for setting subjects in or in front of filthy pieces of plastic sheeting - (here delicately interpreted, I must say) and the other is the note of dissonance provided by the skeleton.. just in case we were tempted to turn it into something too pretty.. (model with skeleton, 1998, A2 charcoal pencil on paper)

a bientot

Jane

Speed dating ..

2011-05-05T14:42:00.000+01:00

A rare chance to do very short poses with two models - double trouble to capture visual information .. don't think .. just draw ..

a bientot
Jane

Petra 2

2011-05-05T08:54:00.000+01:00

The same nicely curvy model as yesterday's posting, with Alberto seen at work reflected in the mirror behind her... all that space to fill and I still chopped her foot off... (Chalk pastel on blue paper, A2, 2008)

a bientot
Jane

Petra

2011-05-04T09:09:00.000+01:00

A chalk drawing made of a pleasingly ample model with reflections in the mirror behind her showing me or one of my colleagues at work... most of my work was on the artist and model theme at the time.
( Chalk pastel on coloured paper, A2, 2008)

a bientot
Jane

Spring sketches no 9

2011-03-30T11:09:00.000+01:00

A very scribbly model undresses.. must have been a 30 second pose... (ink on paper, A4 sketchbook, 2008)

a bientot
Jane

Spring sketches no 8

2011-03-29T13:31:00.001+01:00

Sometimes with short poses we choose what to notate and what to leave out ...

... and sometimes we try to include everything including the kitchen sink when there really isn't time.. (two short poses, chalk on sugar paper, A3, 2009)

a bientot
Jane

Spring Sketches no 7

2011-03-25T08:47:00.000Z

Pink lady .. a variety of apple.. and a minute with the model..

a bientot
Jane

Spring Sketches no 7

2011-03-24T11:40:00.000Z

These two short poses (A3 charcoal pencil on sugar paper 2009) were probably made in the same series and are certainly with the same model - a very characterful one, whose likeness was one of the easiest to capture. Although likeness is not the object of the exercise, (which is to observe the whole figure), it is always nice when it happens.

a bientot
Jane

Spring sketches no 6

2011-03-23T15:11:00.000Z

A blue one. One of my favourite supports for very short poses is the sugar paper you buy in colourful blocks from toy shops for children's drawings. It has a nice rough resistance and "hooks" chalk and pastels particularly well. However it is much too absorbent for ink. Here are a few chalky white lines on a blue background. The model has a rather masculine look to her shoulders and seems solid without having a womanly voluptuousness... but I cannot really remember the session .. by the time you have spent about 700 hours in the life room you can't remember everything, though it is surprising how much is retained.

a bientot
Jane

Spring sketches No 5

2011-03-22T11:49:00.000Z

Line and mass... the Lamy pen I use takes an ink which is wonderfully soluble and leads to all sorts of accidental effects and colours... however it is not very lightfast. Never mind; these sketches are in sketchbooks so they hardly fade at all. So sometimes it feels like the right thing to do to finish off the sketch with a wet brush.. or, as in one of the examples above, the side of a pencil, to add shadow or volume.

a bientot
Jane

Spring Sketches No 4

2011-03-21T13:55:00.000Z

A couple of scribbly ones.. not so much taking a line for a walk but more like taking it on a pub crawl and getting it drunk.. but I was on the orange juice myself.. advice: don't drink and draw!

à bientôt
Jane

Spring Sketches No 3. Ink/line/endomorph

2011-03-20T10:17:00.001Z

These were all from the same series of short poses - draw, turn the page, draw, turn the page .. and above all ...... LOOK! My prof in Brussels said if you have 30 seconds look for 29 and then draw. They are never perfect so it is a good thing you can move swiftly on to the next one.. but don't suffocate the line.. the line must breathe .. that's a tough one..

Ha ha .. a cheeky felt nude is peeping out from the bottom corner.. a stowaway on the Good Ship Blogspot!

à bientôt
Jane

Further felt

2011-03-19T19:57:00.000Z

If you like to draw you just draw with whatever you have ... wool is quite good .. especially if you knit it or knot it a little bit first ..

This is another contribution to Sara's birthday project..

à bientôt

Jane

Splashing about

2011-03-19T19:51:00.000Z

My friend Sara doesn't know that her friends are putting a project together for her 50th birthday. I have been messing around with felt today making my contributions.. it is a lot of fun..

à bientôt

Jane

Spring Sketches No 2. Ink/line/endomorph

2011-03-19T10:39:00.005Z

A5 size sketchbook. Calligraphy pen and a minute with the model. A satisfyingly ample one to wrap the line around. The challenge is always to create three dimensionality without recourse to shading. Especially when she is leaning over and away from my point of view. Another one tomorrow.

à bientôt
Jane

Spring Sketches Series No 1

2011-03-18T15:21:00.006Z

I made this sketch a while ago ... (couple, ink and wash, A5 , 2005) My friend Sheri sent me a beautiful drawing recently and the subject reminded me so much of this one of my own.... then I thought of blogging some of these sketches while I am on the point of getting a studio and getting back down to work again. It will help get me in the mood after too long a break.

This is an "après Rodin" moment of love. If you want to see Sheri's drawing and her wide range of lovely works made with everything from paintbrush to knitting needle visit Everyday Louise by Sheri La...

a bientot

Jane

Little acorns

2011-02-25T14:01:00.003Z

Trying to get started again .. here's a small nude fashioned in a new medium for me. I have always been a needlewoman and have long been wondering how to build a technique around that and this is a new line of experimentation. I love Tracey Emin's blankets but I didn't want to imitate them .. maybe I can find a way to do something different with this roving wool and a needle combined with other elements. Words, in particular. And needlepoint with soluble canvas, perhaps.. here we go..

I am frustrated with having no studio but this can be done at home without poisoning the family...

a bientot

Happy New Year

2011-01-14T09:47:00.003Z

Happy New Year

This year's resolution is to open my studio again and get back down to work.. watch this space.

This year's stocking went to my brother, who is younger than me, but old enough to have seen the first episode of Doctor Who with those utterly terrifying Daleks. This is one of those original Daleks who now, retired from a long career of frightening children (and quite a few parents) is enjoying a harmless game in the snow and using those guns to shoot nothing more lethal than a couple of snowballs.

His teddy bear is on there too - and his daughter Hannah's guinea pig.. and on the inside? Rather a lot of wine gums.

a bientot

Happy New Year

2010-01-15T09:14:00.003Z

This year's Christmas Stocking missed its deadline... Josephine, my stepmother, never got to hang it up on Christmas Eve and will have to wait for next year. Instead of having a slick organised Christmas I spent it in a blizzard of little bits of wool partly because in order to work in the quotation - the only reference Shakespeare ever made to Christmas - I had to make the stocking bigger than usual. Appropriate though, for a lady resident of Stratford on Avon.

Here is the whole passage - Marcellus to Horatio at the end of Hamlet, Act one - Scene one.

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is that time.

Packing roses

2009-02-05T14:08:00.002Z

Sometimes you are in the middle of things and you have to leave.... this is a piece about packing up the studio mid-series. I always felt these rose paintings were composite elements of a larger work.. so here I find I was at least partially right. It may not be the end of the story. I may not know for some time.

a bientot

Jane

Self portrait in cage with open door and butterfly..

2009-02-04T19:23:00.003Z

You can use a frame for a print of a self portrait but why not a cage? If you sometimes feel that you are in one it can be appropriate. But of course the door is open so it is all about choice. This is a detail from an installation I made as part of a show during January at the Goethe Insitute in Rotterdam. It was all about the effects of living from country to country on the work that I make. I will post the rest of the installation tomorrow.

a bientot

Jane

A new print at a new stage

2009-01-07T19:50:00.006Z

Three delightful models!... I made a soft ground etching - then used aquatint - which inadvertently put paid to some of the original drawing which hadn't completely etched. Grr. Then I went over with a soft ground again and added a few lines - especially to define the dog. Yes, its a dog. Then I totally forgot to cover the back of the plate so that meant the plate heated up in the acid and I etched a hilarious,unintentional, aleatoric abstract compostion on it for good measure - might print it off one day just to annoy myself.. meanwhile .. well. This process definitely isn't spontaneous but I am slowly catching on - only experience and our mistakes can teach us of course and I am a great one for wanting to run before I can walk..

a bientot

Jane

Happy Christmas Everybody

2008-12-26T12:46:00.004Z

Not my usual style but I do this every Christmas. I sit down before an array of coloured wools and "paint" with them until a Christmas stocking has made itself for this year's recipient. I make it up as I go along. We were so happy to have my Mother, Betty, with us on Christmas Day this year but I took this to the wire with the stocking finished at 2.30 in the morning and just hanging in time for Santa's boots to be almost visible descending the chimney. Most enjoyable.

a tres vite

Jane

Sleeping infant

2008-12-13T12:03:00.002Z

My small daughter, sketched while she was asleep in 1997, aged about three months. She was not a beautiful baby and had a blotchy face but was none the less an absorbing subject whether I was drawing her or not.

a bientot

Jane

Scribbles and blots

2008-12-09T08:18:00.003Z

Here's a drawing I made last time I went to SKVA in Rotterdam - very free and I got the ink to keep its flow by occasionally dipping my pen in the water (n.b. I love ink;I hate pens!) and started it off by shaking a few blots onto the page, one of which became his right nipple, albeit a a millimetre or so too low.

a tres vite

jane

Last one...

2008-12-08T09:51:00.004Z

The last and smudgiest of these monoprints. I think this was a very fast one. It is always interesting afterwards to find what I chose and notated from the scene in front of me. In this one the model becomes integrated with the foliage and objects behind her, and, as she leans towards me I just have time to note the back of her hand and the corrugated knuckles before the line falls away with the curve of her lower leg... and time's up.

a tres vite

Jane

monoprints in minutes (4)

2008-12-07T14:52:00.002Z

Nearly the last of this series .........(monoprints, 30 x 30, 2008) tomorrow one last smudgy little one and then, since I am preparing an exhibition next month in the Goethe Institute in Rottterdam, who knows what strange miscellany all my sifting through and choosing will produce..

a bientot

Jane

Monoprints in minutes (3)

2008-12-06T10:19:00.002Z

Two more from the monoprint series I am serialising. I love the accidental smudgy effects that are a by-product of this medium. Remember the actual drawing is on the back - a clean, 5b pencil drawing in a reverse image... I always prefer the print. Last examples tomorrow...

a bientot

Jane

Monoprints in minutes (2)

2008-12-05T17:55:00.004Z

Just a couple of purely linear accounts of one-minute model poses... made a few weeks ago. Don't I make it look easy? Just try it... and these are far from perfect.

a bientot

Jane

Monoprints in minutes

2008-12-04T09:23:00.004Z

Sometimes, with models I know well, I really capture a likeness. It's not a portrait and getting a likeness is not the objective but it is quite satisfying when it happens. With this model on this occasion I was feeling her in a linear way. I was having some fun with the foliage in the background - I often feel the need for a context - even a narrative - though not always - as you will see tomorrow.

a bientot

Jane

Roses and Ronsard...

2008-12-02T16:32:00.004Z

"Mignonne, allons voir si la rose,

Qui ce matin avait desclose

Sa robe de pourpre au soleil,

N'a point perdu cette vesprée

Les plis de sa robe pourprée

Et son teint au vôtre pareil.

Las! voyez comme en peu d'espace,

Mignonne, elle a, dessus la place,

Las! Las! ses beautés laissé cheoir!

 Ô vraiment marâtre nature,

Puisqu'une telle fleur ne dure,

Que du matin jusques au soir!

Or donc, écoutez-moi, Mignonne,

Tandis que votre âge fleuronne

En sa plus verte nouveauté,

Cueillez, cueillez votre jeunesse:

Comme à cette fleur la vieillesse

Fera ternir votre beauté."

a bientot

Jane

Nude studies in indigo

2008-10-03T13:36:00.003+01:00

Another recent fast sketch.. when you have only a few minutes it is all about choosing.. note this.. omit that.. mostly omit, of course..

a bientot

Jane

Studies in Indigo

2008-09-30T09:32:00.002+01:00

Even when there's only five or ten minutes to play with I rarely just notate the figure although sometimes if the muscles are good I get lost in the anatomy. Composing with the figure in the space is where the interest lies for me and especially where there are other people working in the room to give it a slight narrative edge. Monoprint again... approx A4.

a bientot

Jane

Model in Monoprint 2

2008-09-16T08:17:00.006+01:00

A one-minuter with the reclining nude...

a bientot

Jane

Model in monoprint

2008-09-15T10:23:00.002+01:00

Three lightening-short poses from Friday's model session which was a well-attended first gathering of the year around a model with dramatic presence. Mindful that I will be back in the graphics studio next week I decided to break out into print medium and work in monoprint. I get a childish pleasure from turning up the result in reverse on the back. I was also enjoying the element of visual rhyme between the model in her cleopatra-like make up and the little buddah figure in the background. They seemed to reflect on each other. More of these tomorrow.

a bientot

Jane

Birthday Roses

2008-09-13T16:46:00.004+01:00

When my friend Ruth left The Hague I threw a small party to say good bye and these roses were given to me by the guests. When people give me roses i usually paint them and then, since they were a gift, I give the painting away. (Birthday roses 50 x 40 cms oil on canvas 2008) I never try to get an exact observational drawing. I just choose the things that I want to paint from the flowers in front of me. I think there is a lot of personality in the leaves.. like a small nest of baby cobras.. the flowers have that lovely heavy floppiness that garden roses have when they open .. anyhow as an artist of the human figure I always run to this subject like a guilty lover to his mistress.. very enjoyable.

a bientot

Jane

Have a good Summer

2008-07-25T09:27:00.002+01:00

I am off to France for the Summer to my second home in the Auvergne - a place where the internet connection is so slow that it is not worth the frustration. So the blog resumes in September with the Autumn fruits of the Summer's productivity. A welcome return to routine. I leave you with a little sketch (nude, reflection, artist, oil on paper A3 2007) and good wishes for the Summer.

a bientot

Jane

Work in progress

2008-06-09T22:13:00.002+01:00

A painting I am making in the studio at Rijswijk. To be continued... I am going off to my house in France for a week - a wonderful prospect.
a bientot
Jane

Life of Brian....

2008-06-06T15:23:00.003+01:00

Brian Irvine came to Limassol with his utterly crazy jazz band and gave us a night of high energy, seriously off-beat wild sounds.. this not very typical work (For Brian Irvine, 60 x 50 paper collage, inks, on canvas 2005) was made for him out of sketches I was making at high speed all the way through the concert.. it includes pencil scribbles of some of the exclamations he made along the way such as "have some Ice cream!", "Endure!" (He meant Enjoy!) and "empty space" - that is the bottom right hand corner, of course..... here is the whole image and two details... normal services will be resumed as soon as possible :)

a bientot

Jane

Model with red scarf....twice

2008-06-04T07:05:00.002+01:00

Two very short poses on one page with the blood-red scarf falling through the composition and linking the figures. (Double nude study with scarf. Patel on A2 green paper. 2007) And now to Rotterdam for the last etching session of the semester.

a bientot

Jane

O(ra)n(g)e-minute pose

2008-05-31T11:58:00.002+01:00

A one-minute artist-model pose from early last year. This is what panic drives one to scribble on to a 25 cms sq piece of indian hand-made paper in such a short time. I am off to London for a few days.

a bientot

Jane

Pambos

2008-05-30T10:41:00.003+01:00

Pambos reclining. (pencil on paper, A3, 2005) A quick study while waiting for Koula to turn up and pose with him. If models as good as this one grew on trees I would start a plantation today.
a bientot
Jane

Bargain Roses from Hooglvliet no 3

2008-05-29T13:53:00.003+01:00

There is no getting away from the compositional nuttiness of this one. But it came to me like this. These were my favorites of all the roses so far because they seemed so "pale and interesting", a sort of broken white colour with green tinges.. probably something went terribly wrong at the cultivators but I was delighted when they showed up, about a year ago. (Bargain Roses from Hoogvliet no 3, 40 x 30 cms, oil on gauze-covered canvas 2007) It is not really a portrait of them but more a painting about the fatness of buds, the whitey-greenness, those rounded, shiny serated leaves which I found vaguely playful and an absence of thorns...and love, attraction, sensuality.....

a bientot

Jane

Bargain Roses from Hoogvliet no 5

2008-05-25T10:54:00.009+01:00

It is one of my great regrets that I have no intellectual grasp of composition. A person who knows about composition, looking at this rose painting, would no doubt tell me why the space is divided up in the wrong way, why the vase is sitting in the wrong position, the roses are arranged in an unbalanced manner etc etc. If I had known all that I could have got to it first and prevented the disaster you see here. (Bargain Roses from Hoovliet No 5, oil on canvas 40 x 40 cms May 2008)

IF it is a disaster... Because I don't know. I just felt it like this and then when my friend came and said "why don't you run the lower background continuously" I did so because I was about to anyway and he confirmed my hunch. Underneath the vase there is just a little more of that band of mars red, and so there should be. I think my camera was drunk so I will retake and repost the photo. Ignorance is bliss - all I know is that this flower painting is in inverted commas. It is saying: "I cannot believe this is me painting roses", and "see how every brushstroke is about a race against death to paint love".

a bientot

Jane

Etching me

2008-05-21T17:11:00.005+01:00

An etching on soft ground made this afternoon in Rotterdam of me wearing a big old Indian hand block- printed shirt. Sally said "why don't you wear an apron?" and I said this is it! Why not have beautiful things even as overalls? This is my kind of etching - it was in the nature of an experiment but came out quite well. In feel it is not so different from just drawing.. you put paper on top of a zinc plate covered with a soft ground. The pencil strokes are transmitted through the paper, picking up the paper texture on the way, and somewhat softening the lines. . Then the acid does its work and the plate is inked for printing..... quite a few times, if you like.

a bientot

Jane

Bargain Roses from Hoogvliet no 4

2008-05-20T16:48:00.005+01:00

I have a friend who occasionally buys himself wilting bunches of cut-price flowers and brings them into the studio, If I turn up he pretends they were for me and I pretend to believe him. Then I get my own back by making paintings of them (Bargain Roses from Hoogvliet No 4, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cms May 2008) such as this affectionate little scribble from this morning.

a bientot

Jane

Cheeky model

2008-05-19T17:30:00.002+01:00

Well this one is rather cheeky and makes me crazy but she is worth it.. usually.. here is five minutes-worth of her insufferable insolence (model sketch, chalk on coloured paper, A3, 2007)

a bientot

Jane

Rise up

2008-05-18T13:46:00.004+01:00

How funny that I never blogged this before - a stray from the uninspiringly-named red/blue series that I made after I arrived in the Netherlands. I felt totally blocked but I wasn't really - it was just a frame of mind - at least I was making things. This has all the usual elements of the time - the shutters, the red couch (trust me, that is a red couch) the couple with pale woman and brown man, the funny disjointed still life in the foreground that is quirky and fuzzy.

a bientot

Jane

Fallen Angel

2008-05-14T18:59:00.003+01:00

The superimposition of this 2007 nude study on a partially effaced earlier drawing, (or drawings), gives the impression of a slight, winged creature at rest in front of a domed classical-looking building with another ghostly figure emerging in between. Memory doesn't serve.... but on finding it again I am rather drawn to the vulnerable, hunched, sleeping figure and its flame-coloured background elements.
a bientot
Jane

Woman in space - lost item..

2008-05-12T12:08:00.003+01:00

A lost item from the Woman in Space series, posted last October/ November, (Henriette, semi-draped, 30 x 30 cms, pastel on acrylic on torn paper 2007) in which various things were going on. Henriette was gradually removing her clothes as the sequence of two minute poses progressed, and so this must be one of the first poses. And secondly the model was placed in the space both as an excercise in simply placing the model in the space - and also in the wider sense of outer space - since most of the series had the model appearing to be alone in some lunar landscape or on another planet somehow. Maybe it mirrorred my own feelings of being lost but let us not go there...

a bientot

Jane

A supermodel.

2008-05-11T08:33:00.003+01:00

She certainly was... in fact if she really had been a size zero I would have had to work harder to get absorbed in my subject. Look at me luxuriating in all these curves and soft round places. My colleague - depicted - was also enthusiastic. We liked the way the model was comfortable with her larger-than-average body and held rather sensual poses.

a bientot

Jane

Two Models in Nicosia

2008-05-09T18:13:00.003+01:00

In Nicosia occasionally we dipped into our pockets and took two models. It was always exciting and when you are looking at two bodies interracting there is always an infinity of things to notice and notate. Here is one of the briefest poses from a session of that kind - it must be Koula and probably Pambos.. the sketch is maybe nothing special but I like the solidity and togetherness of the couple as they face away from each other. Almost as if facing an encroachment of some kind...

a bientot

Jane

Reclining nude, inclining artists.

2008-05-07T07:50:00.002+01:00

Here are all the usual elements of an observational drawing made in our studio in Rijswijk. (Nude, chalk pastel, 50 x 70, 2007) The model adopts a traditional pose that can be held for an hour. The artists appear reflected in the looking glass behind her, as do elements of her own reflection. The colours are mainly primary colours and the light is from all directions. Business as usual. Sometimes I feel like exploding a bomb in there... or setting off fireworks, lighting a fire, unleashing the fire extinguisher, uncaging a lion... we all need change. Tomorrow a big, black, male model - that will help.
a bientot
Jane

Torn from the sketchbook

2008-05-06T19:04:00.006+01:00

Sometimes, when trying to express a moment of eroticism, anatomy is suspended and hands, arms, lips, bodies don't add up to their usual quotas of limbs and parts, don't know where they start and stop.. it's abandonment. This is a rhapsody on a kiss...

a bientot

Jane

Rise up!

2008-05-05T08:25:00.007+01:00

This is such a large piece that I found I had to draw with big sweeping arm movements and quite fast to capture the figure in the few minutes I had. (Figure reaching upwards: charcoal on brown paper, 120 x 50; 2006) I was inspired by a huge studio space that was fairly new to me and propelled me into working in this way. The ghost of the previous drawing is helping an illusion of movement although the model was standing still .. or as still as she possibly could.

a bientot

Jane

Nude study

2008-05-04T09:33:00.008+01:00

This was a quick preparatory study for a colour drawing I posted last October. I wanted to go further with it but in the end the pose turned out to be too difficult to hold for the model and he complained bitterly. But sketches like this are also works in themselves. (Nude study, A3, charcoal pencil, 2007) I liked the way the screen and the lantern in the background translated into a sort of landscape..

a bientot

Jane

Child, asleep

2008-05-01T09:44:00.002+01:00

On a hot Summer morning in France I drew my small daughter before she woke up. I can rather tell from the way I have drawn this that it must have been the Summer I spent reading about Egon Schiele and looking in particular at his drawings and watercolours.. i can also tell from the size of the child .. so probably 2004. I am off to England for a few days.
a bientot
Jane

Titi le penseur (2)

2008-04-30T08:15:00.006+01:00

I will be drawing this model again on 9th May and I am going to be very sensitised to his head on hands poses after assessing last year's work and finding so many of them. (nude study, oil colour on brown paper, 50 x 60 cms 2007) It certainly does make geometry with the body, as in this case where it breaks up into two squares... of course I did not think of that at the time, but was trying to catch his thoughtful mood.

a bientot

Jane

Man walking away from me

2008-04-29T21:46:00.004+01:00

We used to be rather crowded in the Nicosia studio where one of the few life classes on the island took place on Wednesday nights. However there is a sense of space in this nude study (Charcoal on brown paper 70 x 40, charcoal 2004) which looks as though the model is walking off into a distant horizon, weighed down with uncertainty... some license must have been taken as I assure you we were practically sitting in each other's laps. Moreover the model will have been stationary rather than walking away, although there have been many times I have made studies of models in motion: that's another story and another challenge.

a bientot

Jane

Titi le penseur

2008-04-28T08:47:00.002+01:00

Another sketch probably from the same day as the last posting. (Titi le penseur; charcoal pencil on paper A3 2007) It is very different in feel to the previous one but shows the same preoccupation about grabbing the essentials from a pose when there are only a few minutes to complete the drawing. Looking back over many drawings and paintings of this model I notice he is particularly fond of posing with his chin resting on his hand like this... from certain angles it can create some interesting triangles within the body.

a bientot

Jane

Different model same idea

2008-04-27T13:36:00.003+01:00

Titi, so called because of his man-boobs, (unfairly in my view), is here seen at work, (Titi, chalk on paper, A2, 2007). I am also seen at work, a hasty 2 minutes grabbing the nugget of the situation, and his reflection in the mirror is also indicated. A typical Rijswijk moment.
a bientot
Jane

Pink Sofa no 2

2008-04-26T20:21:00.007+01:00

This quick large chalk drawing was made either just before or after the one posted below. The artist is headless.. possibly departing... I have tried to capture the rather bulky form of the model - and his strong presence in sleep...

a bientot

Jane

On the pink sofa

2008-04-25T14:53:00.003+01:00

A very quick and rather large sketch from about a year ago when my colleague posed for me. I was feeling the lack of male models and he turned out to be really good. (Artist and Model - chalk on brown paper, 90 x 70 cms 2007) I think that this work has a slow reveal. First you see the artist in the background.. me.. then a confusion of geraniums or whatever - poinsettias if I am not wrong - and then all that scribble in the foreground turns out to be a sleeping person dissolving out through the bottom of the frame. Of course I am not in the background but looking straight at him from a couple of meters in front.. it comes from a time when the artist-model relationship was at issue in my works.. one way or another it always is.

a bientot

Jane

For Pippa Bacca

2008-04-20T20:58:00.007+01:00

I used to call this technique of white ambiguous layers the "Turkish White Veil of Death" .. I was sort of joking but not any more. Hoping for the permission of its owners I rename this painting Under the Turkish White Veil of Love..... A tiny, tiny, tiny embrace - (watercolour, white oil paint, paper 10 x 15 cm 2005) to put back the clock.
In Pippa's memory, and for us all to move on, I quote James Agee, whose words I heard movingly sung today. Pippa desired something more like this... not the eternal black wedding night of death but a peace adventure lit by stars.

Sure on this shining night
Of starmade shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole
Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder wand'ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars.

a bientot
Jane

Life made flesh

2008-04-18T11:38:00.004+01:00

It goes without saying that people who have lived well into middle age have long life and experience behind them with many stories to tell. They may have lost the bloom of youth but the patina of age has its own attraction. To the artist - to this one anyway - older subjects are rich indeed. Their bodies and faces tell stories. I would give half a dozen satin-skinned twenty-something models for this one .. I don't know him, or even his name, but he had a depth that made drawing him absorbing. He would have been extremely handsome at 25 but less good to draw. One can read the story of his life on the lines of his face, and body and all of them suggest subtle things to the pencil. (Man, standing, charcoal pencil A3. 16 04 08 with apologies for the photo) In fact, in other studies where he was facing me, there was a danger of giving too much attention to the high level of interest in his face - craggy but fine - and still handsome actually.
a bientot
Jane

Mine for fifty minutes.....

2008-04-15T19:18:00.004+01:00

Another very big, very quick, sketch from the Artist-as-Hawk-Model-as-Prey period (Artist and model: 100 x 130; chalk on brown paper; 2007) I lurk in the background reflected. Of course I am actually right in front of her. That's easily forgotten.

a bientot

Jane

Model as prey. Artist as hawk.

2008-04-14T18:58:00.004+01:00

The artist's predatory gaze, the menacing background elements, the violence of simplistic colours, the huge format size and the scribbly speed of execution all add up to a kind of menacing of the model. At the time (Elizabeta, chalk pastel on canvas (I know, I know, I must be mad) 100 x 120, 2007) I was really questioning what we were doing all standing around our easels with a naked person in front of us. At the Academy I never questioned the innocence of the practice. But last year the complex questions circulating in my mind resolved themselves into a kind of violence for a while. Artist as hawk. Model as prey. Strange.

a bientot

jane

Tunnel of love

2008-04-12T12:20:00.002+01:00

No light at the end of this one it seems. Its a very big chalk work on brown paper (couple, chalk on brown paper 150 x 90, 2006) coming from the end of a roll begged from a paper factory in Limmassol.. I just made it up, based on some vague but insistent memory of a work by Picasso ..

a bientot

Jane

Model in Rotterdam

2008-04-10T14:52:00.004+01:00

Getting back into training after three weeks away - a couple of quick model studies made yesterday. I was trying some new chalks - the waxy quality of the one I used for the sitting pose appealed to me wheras the smudginess of the conte crayons in the recumbant pose didn't really go my way.

a tres vite

Jane

Before I forget

2008-03-14T20:59:00.003Z

This is quite big - probably 120 x 100 cms - and was made in an hour with Henriette and the artist - me - looking rather thin in the reflection, painting. It belonged to the 2007 artist and model (yellow) series (posts passim) which was a time when I was working big in a very very very big space. I am still in the big space but tragically have stopped noticing the inspiring spaciousness. Technically this piece is nuts and that is probably why I never blogged it before. But I feel I must, for the sake of completeness and affection. And because I need to remember the reason I adored the space in the first place.

a bientot

Jane

Unsigned...

2008-03-13T14:10:00.004Z

Ink?! - all I can say is when God created the squid it was with me in mind. You may use what emanates from a squid it to flavour your pasta if you like, but I would rather fill my pen with it.. or whatever derivative of it I am using. This embrace (ink on paper 15 x 24 cms approx 2005) has an intensity but it also has a few infelicities which I think I may be able to recitfy. So I just thought I would blog it now in case I ruin it in the process... and so that that the squid did not die in vain.
a bientot
Jane

Eric

2008-03-12T18:10:00.004Z

Eric was pretending to cry. (charcoal pencil; A4, 1998) Usually he posed nude or in a turban and/or sarong. Sometimes he stuck pins in himself or adopted excruciatingly difficult poses to test himself. This made a tension that excited everyone in the studio. Being a buddhist monk he believed in mind over matter. At the same time he communicated how it felt to be him during these ten minutes and we all shared his total absorption which is transparent in this drawing. I wanted to blog an aquatint today but it was a disaster. Sometimes it is good to look back into the past in order to go forwards...

a bientot

Jane

Line line line

2008-03-11T19:08:00.002Z

Thirty seconds contemplating a figure.. or maybe two.. aha!
a bientot
Jane

Blind monoprint

2008-03-10T10:49:00.007Z

A very impulsive retrieval of something inside. (Untitled. approx 24x30 cms. monoprint 2006) How? A thin smearing of indigo oil paint on glass, a layer of paper and 30 seconds trusting my line with the wrong end of a paintbrush... Then my chinese seal.

a bientot

Jane

Drawing by the line

2008-03-08T09:23:00.002Z

A graceful pose held by our model in Rotterdam on Wednesday. (Model Study. Sanguine on 110 grm cartridge paper. 2008) As you can see, she moved so much, especially her hands,

that I was obliged to make a second drawing from the same pose. Management of model fidgeting is part of the job, so I don't complain.

a bientot

Jane

Sketch for Ghosts of Love

2008-03-05T21:47:00.002Z

Its not a great photo but it shows the first working-out of the composition I blogged over the last two days.. (Cavafy No 1. chalk pastel and pencil on canvas , 50 x 60cms 2005.) I know, I know... what kind of a technique is that! But I remember coming home late one night and grabbing the nearest materials and making this scribbly erotic thing in fifteen minutes which gave rise to so many other works. Enough of this nostalgia.. Tomorrow something very recent - made this week.

a bientot

Jane

Ghosts of Love (2)

2008-03-05T07:23:00.004Z

Here is the sister work to yesterday's posting in which I did not play quite so fast and loose with techniques and although it is still mixed media most of it is oil paint. (60 x 70 cms mixed media 2005) I thought also to include the sketch made from life on which I based the couple in this painting. Forgive the bad photo with its "hotspot" - it was too difficult to remove it from the frame.

a bientot

Jane

One candle will be enough...

2008-03-04T17:28:00.002Z

A poem of Cavafy reveals the poet in old age lighting a single candle, its soft light creating the "fitting" atmosphere to bring on the ghosts of his past love life. He sits in the candlelight and waits for them to come. In my painting (60 x 70 cms, mixed media 2005) there are several candles and their reflections because I got carried away with them as objects. The space has exterior-interior ambiguity but I feel it in fact to be an interior I knew well and the red coverlet and the table also making regular appearances in my compositions of that time. Tomorrow the sister work..

a bientot

Jane

One minute studies

2008-03-03T11:22:00.004Z

A couple of linear nude studies (A4 pencil on paper) made in London in 2000 and finally exhibited and sold in Nicosia in 2005. If memory serves, these two are the same model and occasion. This was John Crossland's studio at the Hampstead Art School, where the model would "perform" a string of thirty one-minute poses just before the break. It was amazing - unique to that studio - and a pure flow that cleared your head of everything except drawing. I have never found anything to compare with it since.

a bientot

Jane

Solution

2008-03-02T08:26:00.004Z

I made a number of works following a session with a young couple who posed for our group in Nicosia in 2005. I worked in clay as well and because I was thinking three-dimensionally the paintings all turned out to have a sculptural quality. One of them is the red/blue oil pastel from a few postings back. This embrace is a layered work (Solution 60 x 50 mixed media on canvas) with highly textured white acrylic overworked with glazes.

a bientot

Jane

After Maillol Again

2008-03-01T09:09:00.002Z

Unusually for me, an abstract work, (Fourteen, A4, watercolour, 2005) based on the composition of Maillol that I stole and worked in lino print and oil pastel further back down the blog. In this work you would need extraordinary powers of recognition to discover the work that inspired it. It doesn't matter any more although I think the figures are legible. Using a rather perverse mixed media of watercolour and black printing ink it has metamorphosed into a rather ominous work about sex and death.

a bientot

Jane

Nude, reclining, arm raised and bent

2008-02-28T08:31:00.002Z

This small watercolour (Nude, reclining, arm bent behind her head, 10 x 15 cms 2005) is a very senusal work that has become rather abstracted without losing the readability of the figure and her langourous stretching body. I gave her a parody of a Rodin title because although the technique is totally different the pose and atmosphere recall the sensual nudes of Rodin that must have been in my mind at the time.

a bientot

Jane

You made everything special

2008-02-27T07:56:00.003Z

This is a tiny ink painting from 2004 which has been hanging on a bedroom wall in Canada since my exhibition in Nicosia. It is somewhat bluer than this and made in an ink that is so soluble and responsive, breaking up into so many subtle colours, that I fear it may not be massively light fast. If it fades it will be a pity, for this drawing captured such an intense erotic mood with more concern for emotional content and happy accidents of line than concern for anatomical accuracy. I recently saw an equally tiny, if not even tinier, erotic ink drawing made in a similar way in a sketch book of Turner in an exhibition in London. It has inspired me to make more....

a bientot

Jane

After Maillol

2008-02-26T14:22:00.002Z

A strange erotic scene from my 2006 oil pastel series that never graduated from its boring working title of "Red/Blue". This one was inspired by a very linear drawing by Maillol which had an even worse title (Deeper in). The female figure seems to be in extremes of pleasure - almost disintegrating in the tangle of bedsheets. The dog has a jealous air . The Cypriot shutters have worked their way in to the composition as so often with me. And the dark skinned man with a fair-skinned woman was a combination that interested me at the time. I also made a lino-print of this composition which is somewhere way back down in this blog under the title "After Maillol and Picasso".
a bientot
Jane

I change everything

2008-02-25T09:10:00.006Z

Models are all different but some are more different than others. (I change everything; 37 x 50 cms, oil on panel 2008) This one took the place by storm and cast her influence on everything around her. With her striking platinum wig, very audacious make up and matching personality she led me to all these bright colours and naif almost humourous treatment of the space. The background elements seem infected by her presence and bend and respond to her personality. The couch seems like a turbulent waterfall with our model lying serenely on the edge unconcerned that she may be carried over at any moment.
a bientot
Jane

Asleep at last..

2008-02-12T19:12:00.000Z

A break from the watercolour series to share a sketch some friends sent me today. I made it in their visitors' book late one night in, I guess, 1997, when my baby daughter and I stayed with them in Paris. The title speaks for itself. At that age the hand is so tiny compared with the head... it comes from a time in my academy days in Brussels when I was preoccupied with what we called "la respiration de la ligne". And, in the Mackenzies precious book, I had only one chance to get it right.
a bientot
Jane

With you I can Live (3)

2008-02-11T17:13:00.000Z

Well this is where I am up to with this .. (With You I can Live (3) ink and watercolour on paper A5, 2008) again a couple of things to fix.. but I do not quite know what they are, although I do know I don't want to shred this one. For now it has stopped speaking to me and I must keep vigil until it stirs...

a bientot

Jane

With you I can live (1)

2008-02-09T08:13:00.000Z

A stroke of good fortune, this couple posed for me late last year and I am beginning to work with my sketches. This watercolour is a very quick, instinctive response to my fact-finding original pencil sketch. I like the title (a cast-off from Tracey Emin) because it means more than one thing. (With you I can live (1) watercolour and ink on paper A4 2008) As I was just saying to a friend, no matter whether male or female, fat or thin, old or young, the nude is always a beautiful thing to draw. The only thing more beautiful than that is two nudes, entwined. There is an infinity of possibilities once you start to look. At that point you forget what you are actually looking at and lose yourself in the landscape of the figures.
a bientot
Jane

Self Portrait with Model and (still-living) Plants.

2008-02-06T19:05:00.000Z

A good likeness of me in this rather naive painting, quickly executed and full of primary colors and simple forms. (Self Portrait with Model before the Plants died; 50 x 60 cms; oil on canvas; 2006). It makes me nostaligic beause we threw away those plants this week, reduced as they were to mere blackened stumps. Nothing ever survives in that vast room despite Alberto's attempts to grow things. Only creativity. But I am going to buy replacement plants because hope survives also...

a bientot

Jane

Study for work in clay

2008-02-05T09:05:00.000Z

This oil pastel study (Red/Blue couple 30 x 24 cms, 2006) started life as a study for a clay model working from a couple who posed in a room with many wooden shutters in Nicosia. Those shutters were in nearly all my work at one time and are given a very free treatment here. The couple are in a strange, rather awkward formation. Mostly my Cyprus works showed couples in sadness or tension. There is an element of tenderness in this one. Tomorrow I resume work in the print studio.

a bientot

Jane

After Maillol and Picasso

2008-02-02T14:37:00.000Z

A linoprint I made just before leaving Cyprus, (After Maillol, linocut, 20 x 29 cms) derived from the reverse image of a very linear concept by Andre Maillol .. who was pleased to entitle it "Deeper in". It has a lighting scheme borrowed from Picasso.. yes, ok, I know am a magpie but I don't care, because I don't believe that artistic stealing is actually possible. What you take from others is your connection to tradition and you make it your own.. In this condition Maillol and Picasso certainly wouldn't want it, although it is not bad of its kind.. But now I have taken another look at it, I intend to re-work it much improved - so watch this space.
a bientot
Jane

The shadow on the wall

2008-02-01T17:38:00.000Z

When I first started working in this studio in the Netherlands I couldn't do anything other than work big because the space is so gigantic and airy. Sometimes it is good to remind myself of the kind of flying feeling I first used to have in there. This is one of the massive quick chalk sketches I made as a response to the space .. I guess it is about 1.50 square...

a bientot

Jane

Yes, I said yes..

2008-02-01T17:20:00.001Z

This is an ink painting I somehow never posted, from my 2005 exhibition in Nicosia which was about couples in tension - against the background of two communities in tension. In this tiny rather abstract and erotic work the female figure seems to pull away from the male, and almost evaporate into the foreground. Or is she falling forwards and melting into him? Don't ask me I only painted it..

a bientot

Jane

Won't take no...

2008-01-31T08:52:00.000Z

Today another kind of print with much less process (Won't take no; monoprint, 12 x 17 cm 2006) but quite suited to the spontaneity of the subject - a hungry moment of lovemaking. In fact the drawing which is a sudden swift outpouring of the imagination - is on the back. For those who don't know, monoprints are made by "floating" paper on a piece of glass thinly coated with oil paint and drawing with pencil or the tip of a brush. The work in reverse image is on the underside. My friend Jane loved this one so I gave it to her and thought to blog it since it has gone out into the world. A moment of pleasure, produced in a moment of pleasure.

a bientot

Jane

Objects of transition

2007-11-28T10:00:00.000Z

Wherever I go around my house I find juxtapositions of things that reflect my gypsy life.. These two sketches (A3, pencil and coloured pencil on paper, 2007) show a bunch of ficus pods, picked up under a tree near the Ledra Crossing Point in Nicosia, casually sitting on an antique Delft tile. Delft, the pictureque town of Vermeer, is at the end of a tram line that passes by my house. Two small objects from two small countries.. there the similarity ends!

a bientot

Jane

Amy Winehouse stole my beehive

2007-11-21T09:26:00.000Z

Henriette is always discernable by her black beehive hairstyle which pre-dates Amy "Wijnhuis", by quite some time. This little scribble from last year (oil on paper 30 x 40) looks like an excercise in using up whatever was left on my palette and I think it had better be the last yellow nude I ever make as I can't think what possessed me to make her such a billious colour. All the same I thought to post it because, simplistic as it is, it's an affectionate and enthusiastic little piece. Tomorrow its the print studio and the call of the acid bath again...
a bientot
Jane