left handed drawing and painting

It has been almost 3 months since my last post in mid April. A long time I know, but, I was working on several canvases through May and June, and then almost 5 weeks ago sh*&#*&% happened. I fell in a stupid accident and broke both of my arms!!!! I am past the worst of it now, casts have been replaced with braces and I have started physiotherapy. I am able to move my wrists, and arms in limited ways. For a number of reasons my left arm is healing faster than my right (dominant) one, but I am optimistic and expect a full recovery in the future.

                                        

Last week, I needed some art therapy, so I finally started drawing, using my left/non-dominant hand and then added some water color paint. It felt so good to do both after what seemed like an eternity. The results are above.

The three sketchbook paintings below are ones I did before the accident, using a similar technique. 
.

Sketchbook Figures Encore

Sketchbook Figure #8

Sketchbook Figure #9

Painting Figures

A Woman of Colour  

24" x 18" - mixed media - marker & water colour on acrylic paper - $50

Another recent figure drawing - to which I applied some water colour paint.

I love the painterly looseness and intense but transparent colours.

Getting Stuck, and Unstuck.

I have been painting almost every day this month, and usually for hours at a time, yet I have posted very little. I have at least a half a dozen paintings in various states of completion - left for a variety of reasons. The subject matter is not new, but a continuation of familiar themes - water reflections, palm trees, the landscape and still life. In each case I started with lots of enthusiasm, solid compositional ideas, a sense of what I wanted to do, and a willingness to respond to whatever happened on the canvas. The going was good until it was not. When I reached a point that I thought some out-of-sight-thinking time was necessary I would put the canvas aside, and start another. When I did return to them I tended to over-paint and lose what I had. Some of these paintings have been wiped out and some remain a challenge for another day. All very frustrating to say the least.

How to get unstuck and back in a good painting groove? Trying something different often helps and so a week  ago I went to an open life studio session and spent 3 hours drawing the model. And here is what I came home with - essentially blind contour figure drawings using marker on acrylic paper (18" x 24"). I did them on the acrylic paper so that if inspired later at home I could paint them. But how......another creative challenge for another day!

Side View

Side View
9" x 12" - acrylic on canvas
SOLD

This is another painting based on a blind contour figure drawing (see below). I have to say that I don't really like drawing reclining figures, but I did like how this one turned out, both as a drawing and as a painting.

Abstracting Figures

Three Posers  sold

Last Friday morning my friend Elisabeth and I painted together. She lives on one of the barrier islands on the west coast of Florida (off the Gulf of Mexico), and I have the good fortune to spend time in the same locale in November and the winter months. Elisabeth is a very talented painter of beautiful landscapes.  Our painting challenge was to 'play and experiment', do something different and complete what we started in one hour.

Sitting on the Edge

Sometimes the hardest part of painting is deciding what to do. My sketchbooks are full of images and plans for all sorts of paintings. I love drawing the human figure and often attend open life drawing studio sessions. During these sessions I usually start out drawing the figure quite accurately, however I inevitably start to distort proportions and exaggerate line and so have a collection of abstracted expressive figure drawings that sometimes find their way into larger paintings. I have included some of these works above, at the left and below right.

Seated Goddess

The day before our Friday painting date I had been looking at these drawings and did the small painting below. I love to accentuate the hips and contrapposto stance - giving the figure lots of attitude. A modern day Venus and so I am calling her Venus of Longbeach.

Venus of Longbeach  12"x16"

The last painting I will show you is the one I completed in the hour with Elisabeth. I had made a very simple thumbnail in my sketchbook of this pose, loosely based on the  The Bather of Valpincon by Ingres, but of course exaggerated. I was really drawn to how the shape of the figure filled the rectangular 'frame of reference' and decided to see what would happen with paint.

I began by painting the figure and then added the orange in the top right area around the figure and really liked that. Then I darkened the area below the ledge on which she is seated for some value contrast. I felt that the upper left quadrant needed more than just colour and so I added a palm branch (part of the Florida scenery) and sort of attached it to her through colour. Looking at it a day later it appeared to me that the figure was engaged in a common activity here and anywhere there is water: sitting at the beach watching the sun set (orange) over the water (blue below). And so it's called Island Sunset.

Island Sunset  18"x24"