Short Drawing Poses on the 30th of January, Florence Italy

Hi
This was a good week of drawing and some lovely pieces were produced at both the short and long drawing events. The long pose is turning into a painting group with several people doing watercolour studies. Our male model on Wednesday was pretty good, a young David and he will pose for us again this coming Monday evening on the 30th of January. Mondays are for short poses.
This Monday 30th of January, the male model will pose for: 1, 2, 5, 10, 15 minutes & finishes with 2 x 25 minute poses. This would be a good time to bring your more expressive drawing media with you. Suggested donation: €10 cash or more. Tips for the model gratefully accepted.
From 7 - 9pm.
Address: Lungarno Guicciardini, 15, 50125 Firenze.

There is no long pose this week.

See you there.
Tom

Life Drawing - Launching a new location in Florence Italy

On March 5th 2020, thanks to the British Institute of Florence, a new life drawing location is opening. It's a place where people who are passionate about drawing the human figure can come together every Thursday as a community and draw. We have fantastic models and a great location. A very supportive management team and it's right in the middle of Florence, alongside the Arno, near ponte Santa Trinita.     


 
Beginning at 6.30pm and we will draw for 2 hours. Each Thursday evening is very low cost and we include a glass of wine for participants. All levels are welcome. We also use a new method of rewarding the model for the pose. The donation method is a more dynamic way of rewarding these very professional people and I hope it motivates the very best to model for us.

The new location is Lungarno Guicciardini, 15, 50125 Firenze FI, Italia

€6, glass of wine, donation to the model.
6.30pm - 8.30pm Short and longer poses.

The difference between a 15 minute sketch & a 2 hour drawing is similar to the difference between a 2 hour drawing & a 15 hour drawing. These are drawn in Florence in February 2020.

Plein air, sketching, exhibition

Hey, been doing lots of things on the qt. Yesterday, thanks to an artist friend who looked after the gallery, I was able to go out and join some others at Fontainbleau for Pleine Air Painting. It was really a great day. Well worth taking the time out for. I'm a little ill with a cold as a result because it was freezing but I'm still very glad I went.

Here are a couple of photos.

I've also been doing a lot of sketching on the metro in Paris. The portraits above are of people I've seen on the train recently. It's a nice way to spend a voyage. I might take a day out just to do that, particularly on longer journeys, perhaps to CDG airport etc.

There's an exhibition coming up. Yes, my own work at last, rather than other peoples. It's in Style Pixie gallery. A great, off the beaten track gallery which I really like. It has an underground feel to it. The curator is great and the directress is very inspiring.

Why go to the south of France?

If you're not going to paint the landscape, why go to the south of France?

Everyone talks about the south of France as though it is a heaven for artists. Not everyone who comes here paints the landscape. So why not Paris, there are surely a lot more galleries?

The reason that artists and art collectors both rave about the south of france is the light, the people and the history, the space it gives you to think and the changing seasons and colours. The best time to come to the south is not the summer. Despite that, tourists and artists alike flock here at that time. For those who live here, the summer is the least attractive season because of the heat & it's getting hotter of course.

We are in spring now and it's almost as green and rich looking as Ireland. The iris' are in bloom and trees are showing off their rich colours. Blossom is everywhere and plants I've never seen before are showing pink, white, purple & mauve. The light is gentle, yet bright. It's not hot, there is a cool breeze today.

The landscape varies from flat to hilly to mountainous very quickly. It's a human scaled landscape. Most structures are built from local stone. As people can travel so easily now, there are a lot more visitors by car during holiday seasons and land is more valuable to sell for housing than to farm. Despite this, farmers work and cultivate the land, producing the best wines and incredible vegetables. The quality of the food alone is a good reason to live here and always has been.

In the winter the light is perfect and there is no searing heat. Photographs rarely capture the magic of the more simple aspects of the landscape. Yet the artists eye is very impressed by even these parts because of the surprising sense of distance and perspective. The easily perceived definition on everything. The landscapes shines. It fills you up with a new sense of colour and an appreciation for values of light which will help you no matter what you are painting.

When you come here you have to grow into the land as well. We can't have the benefits of the city while enjoying contact with nature. Nature can't survive that. When you come here, be a farmer, an artist or a writer for a while & leave the TV behind.

Portrait in tempera

To zoom in on the details in this painting click here.


Here's a photo of a painting that I did in two sessions last week. The first layer is a tempera and the second is oil. One over the other. The basic ingredients of the tempera and the oil are the same. Except that the tempera has the egg added. You do it all yourself, from dissolving the resin, mixing the ground pigment to thickening the oil in the sun for a few weeks. It's that process of being in touch with the materials that makes the painting very personal.

The model was very pleased with the painting too and took a photo of me at work. He's asked me not to post a photo of him beside it but I'm sorely tempted. Anyway here is the painting. It's not finished. There is more to do on it but I want the current paint to dry first, in a couple of weeks.

Exhibition update-Greenlane Gallery

There are four paintings which are on show in the Greenlane Gallery in Dingle, Co. Kerry this month.

They are:

Garcon
Shopping
Negotiations
The Lovers Whisper

I'm very pleased about this because Dingle is one of those special places in the world. It was a pivotal place of change for me several years ago, before I decided to move to France. I was on an artists retreat with some American artists who came over from New Haven. I thought that there would be more Irish artists too but in fact I was the only one.

It rained and rained for two weeks without ceasing. Despite this we walked and explored every day and wrote,talked, painted and went out over the sea to the Blasket Islands. It was boot camp for creatives and I loved it. Thanks to Caoimhghin O'Fraithile, our indestructible & madcap artist guide, we visited many amazing, artistic and historical locations in Dingle and the ring of Kerry. It was formative. The Greenlane gallery, which was in a different building then also opened my eyes to the freshness and purity of the kind of art that a location like Dingle can produce. So it's great to have my work on show there and it's a great gallery.