Drawing Room summer school - day 2, Tuesday

The day started with Lisa Brice's talk about her work, and many of us regretted not seeing her recent show at Tate Britain, which finished just a week ago.

Her work addresses "the longstanding art-historical tradition of the female nude" and often refers to images already seen in paintings but given a twist - for instance, do you recognise Millais' Ophelia, floating in the water, here -

(via)

Much of her work is monotone and her colour of choice is a vibrant blue -

(via, where there is an interview)

For source material, I'd brought along an issue of the RA Magazine, and randomly put on the page the figurative images that appealed to me. Before long, two sheets were full and stuck up on the wall -

 Activity across the room -

 Later in the afternoon another sheet was full -

Nice to spend all day ... well, minus the talk and breaks ... "just drawing", but come 5pm I didn't feel quite satisfied: not merely with my lack of skill {rephrase!: my slowly developing skill!}but mainly with the sense of senselessness - where is this going?

But really, does it matter? Every one of those little items has been a little lesson in some way, showing up something that could, and probably will, be done better - or has awakened a bit of interest in something new, or was an instance of overcoming reluctance to tackle something that looked difficult and turned out to be manageable. Plus, I enjoyed "just drawing".

 Once home, I cut the inspirational pix out of the magazine

 ... and made a concertina book -

Artist of the day (book picked up at random in the library) - David Batchelor -

From Flatlands (2013)