Mother and baby at nursery

It’s such a lovely time when a baby is a tiny velvet-headed snuffling little creature.

Waiting for Nursery

It’s a depressing fact that some people have nothing better to do than sit in their cars for half an hour just to make sure they have a good parking space close to the nursery school when they come to pick up their children. I just leave my car behind after drop off and walk home (and have the best parking space of all – tee hee!)

Thelma – thirty minutes

Thelma was a real trooper, the evening I did this. It was coldest evening we’ve had this year and the building that we do our drawing in is basically one room with no vestibule, just a door that opens straight to the outside. The person running the class suggested that she could keep her clothes on if she wanted to – but Thelma is a tough woman and she insisted on modelling nude. We all applauded her at the end of the evening.

Thelma – Ten minute drawing

380mm x 235mm ink on scrap paper

Self portrait in the car

135mm x 80mm pen in cartridge sketchbook

Robin reading (just for Wendy)

A quick sketch before bedtime, (I’m in the bed). See the comments in the previous post to see what I'm going on about.

And another

Half an hour, pencil on scrap paper 230mm x 280mm

Another life drawing

Half an hour.

340mm x 150mm pencil on printers’ paper

Last night’s life drawing

Three ten-minute drawings. Each of these is about 31cm in height. I used up some old printing paper samples and ink and watercolour.

Discovered a new art group!

I’ve lived in this area for nearly twenty years and I’ve only just discovered the St Albans Art Society who organise very reasonably priced life drawing sessions over the winter months. I’m so thrilled to find somewhere that’s so easy and convenient to get to. My last search had only led me to much more expensive and inconvenient classes that provided tuition, when really I only wanted access to a model and to go my own sweet way without being directed. So next time you want to find a life class, try Googling ‘(your area) art group’ rather than ‘life drawing class’. The model was very good – great, interesting face and she kept her position and returned to it perfectly. I was so pleased that my friend Jenny joined me (after a gap of twenty or so years), though looking at her beautiful drawings, you'd think she’d been coming to these classes for years and years.

Last night’s sketching of Robin and Tom

Crackskull Bob has said that he’s finding it difficult to ‘keep feeding the insistent maw of blogdom’. For some reason I can’t comment on his blog, but I attempted to recommend that he should just post hugely enlarged bits of old drawings. I find that when I save my hi-res pictures for web and a tiny bit of the picture fills my screen (before I re-size it) I invariably much prefer the randomly cropped enlargement.

Upper drawing 200mm x 145mm. Cropped drawing 50mm x 50mm

If I had a couple of hundred pounds to spare

Cost of good, professional dye and highlight hair treatment about £200, cost of new Intuos 3 drawing tablet about £200, cost of robotic vacuum cleaner about £200.