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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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..

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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

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

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