This week I struggled deciding what to paint, as every concept I thought of failed to coalesce or to inspire me sufficiently. Eventually I reminded myself that singers warm up with scales and thus it never hurts to practice your fundamentals. My artist friend Susan (of whom I recently painted two portraits) excels at painting figures in her landscapes... I do not.I hauled out my sketchbook to look at some plein air figure sketches I did during an August afternoon at one of the lakefront beaches near my home. Some sketches are better than others, most are not great, but practice makes perfect as we know. So this morning I simulated "plein air" in my dining room and practiced figure sketching using my outdoor painting kit.
working from a photo (but no drawing!) & waiting for paint to dry between some steps. Whatever, I got a better result and just in the nick of time; in a couple weeks I'll take a stab at nude live figure sketching at our Chicago Cultural Center. To be clear it is the model and not I who will be nude, although should a distraction become necessary...
On a completely different note, I read an article Friday morning about alternative, more truthful slogans that could apply to products and I could not stop chuckling about this one which I have paraphrased: Hot Pockets — every bite's a different temperature! Enjoy meditating on the truth of that while you look over today's sampler of figure sketches.
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