Yesterday I went to the last class of Mike Bailey's amazing 10 Week Beyond The Obvious workshop. I have taken the class 4 times but I always try to go to the current class finale as a guest. In 10 weeks all the participants have created at least 20 full sheet paintings. There is one participant who manages to turn out 30, 40 or more. The rest of us just shake our heads in amazement. Each student creates a still life setup and they must stick with that composition throughout the 10 weeks. The last class everyone brings in their 20 paintings and each person has an opportunity to arrange them in order of creation, placed under mats and then guests and fellow students file past the display. We are allowed to take photos with the artists' permission. I forgot to get permission to put some of them on the blog, so I can't show you the amazing work. A pot luck luncheon follows. It is always a fabulous day and a wonderful celebration of hard work, perseverance and amazing creativity on everyone's part.
One of the things I do is photograph many of the people in attendance. It is a well known secret. Naturally, there were some special faces that I fell in love with. Today was a rainy day, perfect for staying in. I thought I would do some drawing with a pen attached to a long wooden dowel device. This allows me to put the paper on the floor and draw with a lot less control. I think it creates a very interesting drawing. I tried to do a continuous line drawing with my "extended arm". My exciting discovery was how unrecognizable these faces are with this technique! All but one of the above drawings is from the same image. I'm not sure what I will do with these drawings but it sure was fun making them.
