Drawing Tuesday - chairs (occupied)

Why "occupied"?

Well, just because ... it's something a little different.

The occupant can be a person, a cushion, a pile of books, a pet, etc - or, an absence ... leaving the chair seemingly empty...

To get in the mood for "Chairs ... again?" I've been going through previous sketchbooks and finding those drawn in museums etc. They appear on 21 pages among my seven "drawing tuesday" sketchbooks. Some of them are now on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/p/CE2EcQIlYDQ/ - use the arrows on the photo to see all ten.

There are many "iconic" chairs - every designer must design a chair, and many are looking good - https://www.gq.com/story/the-12-most-iconic-chairs-of-all-time. The "10 most famous chairs in history" may amuse you ... https://ottawacarpetclean.com/10-famous-chairs-history/ (btw Sir John A Macdonald is a famous Canadian, a Father of Confederation - and Ottawa is the capital of Canada)

When drawing chairs - perspective can be a problem. Will all the legs be in the right place? Looking at the negative space can be helpful, as can closing one eye, so the legs don't change position.. 

A google search shows over a million videos on drawing chairs! I gave up after watching two short, but poor, videos - you may have better luck....

From Sylvia - Two occupied chairs, one today and one I did earlier (1982)! The cats come and go and although similar, so do the chairs.

From Hazel - My granddaughter came to draw with me last Saturday.  As she was drawing, I drew her sitting on my fold-up chair in the studio. It was a great opportunity  to draw her even though you can't see much of the chair! As you can see I had to keep adding sheets of paper to fit it all in!

From Ann - Lunch at Korto in Muswell Hill  outside and so I  thought 'occupied chairs' and got stuck in sketching this couple with their dog outside. Enjoyable observing ...

From Carol -  a chair occupied by Tubby Bear and Goldie

From Judith - Not time to sit but allowed photos to be taken!

From Mags - Ian at work at his computer sitting on his expensive but necessary adjustable office chair. In haste using Photoshop filters as I should be tidying my studio and making masks... 

From Janet B - Miss Molloy in one of her favourite basking spots - a rickety plastic garden chair. I love drawing chairs but I’m not so keen on drawing cats and I usually give up in despair. This is one of my better efforts. 

From Jackie - garden chair ….pastels and charcoal…

 rather a challenge attempting the proportions and perspective aargh...

but nice to spend the afternoon in the garden with good weather.

From Sue S - This is from a photo - not had time to set up as things a tad chaotic.

From Jo - The chair is the one my mother sat in for food and crosswords. It's not quite such a hideous colour - dark chocolate brown. The chairback i a piece of crochet by her mother in some 'ecr' silky thread. The cushion is an ex-sampler - possibly real. And wood is ?teak coloured.

From Sue B - .could not get the circle right on the perspective of this much loved leather and wooden legs and arm supports  nineteenth century library chair

From Gillian - A visitor !

And from me - Not much this week! Because of emergency granny duty I spent the morning with the poorly grandbaby instead of quietly drawing. Poorly or not, she rushed about, but she did sit still in her chair while having lunch (it was good to see she had regained her appetite) which gave a few moments to "capture" the scene -

- and during nap time (for both of us!), Dolly was the stand-in at the photoshoot. 

Poetry Thursday - All Night by Lisel Mueller

Poetry collection in a 1992 notebook*

All Night

All night the knot in the shoelace
waits for its liberation,
and the match on the table packs its head
with anticipation of light.
The faucet sweats out a bead of water,
which gathers strength for the free fall,
while the lettuce in the refrigerator
succumbs to its brown killer.
And in the novel I put down
before I fall asleep,
the paneled walls of a room
are condemned to stand and wait
for tomorrow, when I'll get to the page
where the prisoner finds the secret door
and steps into air and the scent of lilacs.

- Lisel Mueller (1924-2020)


(Other poems from this ah hoc collection will appear in coming weeks.)


*In 1992, another page in the notebook reveals, my son - aged 16 - flew to Vancouver on 20 June and returned on 26 August after going camping with his cousins and eating lots of Granma's cooking. Whereas I holidayed, more briefly (16-30 May), in Madrid and Paris. 

Drawing Tuesday - fruits/vegetables

A bit of background

This theme should be fairly straightforward, no? Get a fruit or vegetable, or several, and draw or paint or collage...

The number of items depicted is up to you - so is whether they are the actual item, or something made from or painted on pottery, or items taken from one of those great 18th century still lives, for instance by Melendez or this one

Search for "still life fruit vegetables" and you'll be spoilt for choice, and get to know a few new artists or revisit favourites. Learn from the masters!

If you want to set up "a proper still life", here are some tips - https://onlineartlessons.com/tutorial/how-to-compose-a-still-life/. To improve the composition and "avoid mistakes" - https://willkempartschool.com/7-simple-compositional-tweaks-that-make-your-still-life-painting-100-more-professional/ (with useful info on those pesky ellipses). This one includes step by step of drawing a pineapple. And there are many more....

From Carol - My lunch (if it lasts this long).  I’m trying to speed up with my drawing being more free and less fastidious so this was a good study to have a go at. Speeding up means more opportunities to draw away from the home (and less waiting about for my husband)! Perhaps this would be a good challenge for one Tuesday although I know some of you are already very speedy indeed (Janet this means you).

From Joyce - watercolour of some salad ingredients looking at complementary colours. Lovely to have such gorgeous colours.

From Ann - A rather still still life of the only fruit and veg in the fridge. Better had I used watercolour paper...but enjoyed the exercise.

From Sue S - allotment veggies on a steel tray, rendered in foil, cut out shapes in coloured paper & card with felt pen highlights. Interesting to try a new method.

From Sue B - A humble drawing of the lemons in my trug, given how marvellous the offerings to date are!!!

Take two, from a different angle, and using chalk pastels (to suggest colour) and pencil

From  Judith - The sun went in and then came out and the phone rang about six times!  Trying different watercolour papers but too disrupted to come to any conclusions.

From Najlaa - Watermelon today.

From Hazel - Here's my drawing of a pineapple. Drawn with coloured pencils.

From Richard - I aimed to loosen up by using watercolour and fairly simple shapes and colours. Nonetheless, bogged myself down in needless detail but a bit faster and a real pleasure. Good to be out of doors.

From Mags - In watercolour directly in my sketchbook I drew the 5 varieties of plums from the fruit stall ( Victoria, Marjories Seedling, Edward, Mirabelle and Reeves ) and the strawberry tops after lunch. Should have used better paper, last week's tap shows through!

From Jackie - two kinds of onions…trying out my  chalk pastels on black paper.

From Sylvia - Here are my figs in fish dish. Now I can finally eat them!

From Gill - My excuse for this drawing is that these were snatched away for lunch!

From  Janet B - A couple of Oddbox corn on the cobs drawn in a sunny garden this morning. Yippee I can now cook them for supper. 

And finally - my "wild tomatoes" (that's what it said on the box) -

 Where to start with the colour? -

Lesson - let the adjacent colour dry, or it will spread into the new, wet one. So I took a break before colouring in the stems -

Interesting to mix the reds, but I did get the dark green tomato completely wrong!

Drawing Tuesday - "strange shapes"

Strange topic, you may well be thinking! It's perhaps more on the imaginative end of the spectrum, rather than the observational end. I started out by trying to unpick the idea of shapes being "strange" a bit....

Shadows - or silhouettes - can be strangely shaped. If it's a cloudy day, wave a torch around to see this ordinary phenomenon!

Organic shapes can fit strangely into geometrical shapes, eg  https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/amyhileyart

Or, geometrical shapes can be combined in "strange" ways - overlapping, intersecting, distorting, reflecting - to make "strange" patterns - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Liberation-by-MC-Escher-1955-Lithograph_fig18_326834755, for instance

Tribal art is full of shapes that look strange to us. https://oronzohistorian.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/140_l.jpg or https://miesnerkartsofafrica.weebly.com/kponyungo-mask---senufo.html or https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ba/c8/fe/bac8fe6b2be15a1873e0e677691ef8d3.jpg (from https://www.contemporary-african-art.com/african-patterns.html) - or many others!

Ordinary objects gathered closely together will make a strange outline or shadow - http://www.timnobleandsuewebster.com/a_hole_2005.html

Another aspect of the phenomenon of "strangeness" is when something is seen as very new and very different - lots of examples in architecture and furniture, for instance. Or fashion, which can also have elements that make no practical sense, or are overly elaborate and make us uneasy.

Strangeness in the natural world, how does that arise? Probably when things look unnatural, eg plants (or their shadows) that have the characteristics of animals (spiky thistles?) or solid trees that have huge branches that twist and turn and even grow into each other.

So, let's see the results....

From Sue S -  Invasion of the spiky monsters? It’s wild out here in Blythburgh! 

From Judith - Strange shapes below tables in Brecon!

From Carol -  strange shapes on an over ripe banana which were changing as I was drawing it. So much to see I don’t think I’ll every look at a banana the same way again.

From Najlaa - Unusual table.

From Joyce - mason’s marks from Tewksbury Abbey. The marks identified which mason had dressed the stone so that they could be paid. Apparently identical marks can also be seen at Gloucester Cathedral.

From Hazel - The shadows of the cherry tree, projecting onto the grass, make wonderfully bold and strange shapes. Drawn with pen and coloured pencil.

From Sue B - New York skyscrapers…from a photograph I took a few years ago

From Mags - Continuing the Drawing Water theme from last week : the strange shapes made by a permanently dripping tap

From Ann - Strange shapes as ...doodles...a watercolour and a collage. 

From Janet B -  enlarged rainwater droplets on a grey table

From Sylvia - Garden furniture looking down from bathroom window. Fairly implausible  - back to the elipses!

From Janet K -  creating strange shapes trying different patterns for a medieval type sleeve. Pattern is 15 cm long, the bit on the right is the lining. It's for a puppet costume.

From Jo - some views of a very strange-shaped object, although perfectly functional if you have the right sized cards. It's a stereoscopic viewer found in a drawer 

From MC - Walking in my local park during lockdown I really enjoyed seeing the big old plane trees with their long branches that reach across the road and their lumpy trunks and twisty branches. A "strange" sight, those organic yet alien shapes. I loved drawing them but had to pay the forfeit of losing my favourite inktense pencil, the dark brown one. It was easy to replace, and I also bought an indigo replacement for an earlier hostage to fortune.

 And a couple of new colours, including Ionian Green, which looks grey until the water hits it -

This is the entire spread, the result of another trip to the park a few days later; I'm not happy with the placement of the tree on the left -