Retro, Another Attempt

Retro

I like vintage stuff, retro, 50s, 60s. So I would like to make a serie of vintage-like playmate kind of things. Inspired by graphics and fabrics design for the background. I start with an old life drawing studies I did. I redraw the pose, and then compose the background. This one is actually my 4th attempt. Roughly a total 8 hours in the making.

Zhao Li with Ink

It was good to see her again, simply yet gracious, she posed with ease. At time candid. I hesitated to go in with colors or just black. I haven't done pure value study in a while so the question was, why not?

After the 1 minute pose warming session, we did 15min studies. There was few uninspiring poses from my point of view, I just did some hands\feets studies.

Zhao Li's Back

I thought we lost her forever when she went back to china, I didn't expect her to come back at all. But when Xu Hui told me she was in town, and all of a sudden the model I had booked for yesterday cancelled at last minute, I knew who to call. And there she was, with a new haircut. She posed gracefully, as usual.

Back in the comfort zone

The previous 3 sessions were quite wasted. Last week I decided to explore a new angle,

but instead I fell back into a known territory. Fountain pen drawing and ink wash. Just to comfort myself on the fact that I "can" sometime. It felt good, I left the workshop not fully satisfied but at least with a smile. During the session I was remembering to myself, a book a read fews days ago, Art & Fear. I need to learn to let go, and just do, knowingly 2 things. 1st I will be disappointed, 2nd there is no perfection. The perfect balance of beauty is imperfection. And this is the main things that attract me to watercolors. The looseness of that medium, it imperfections, is at the core of it beauty.

Double Trouble!

Not having enough of Xu Hui, we ask her to come with a friend, Zhao Li. To discover new ways of making mistakes. And it worked. Being not accurate when you’re drawing a single figure is forgiving. These inaccuracy haunt you as soon as you try to put down the 2^nd figure on the paper. Whatever you do, it doesn’t work. It took me some time to actually realize that the problem Was not the new figure, but the first one, to which the 2^nd relate to. It was a great session, as Xu Hui and Zhao Li know what we need, and delivered raw inspiration thru their natural beauty.