I  have accumulated many sketches over the years; some in notebooks, on scraps of paper, in art pads and folders. Some work is good, some bad and the rest indifferent. And that isn’t all of it, when moving, I made the bold choice to give work away, or throw it out. Recently I decided to go through a folder or two, to see if I found anything interesting.  These drawings had stories attached to them; some had sold and I only had photos of the originals, but many were tucked away, waiting for me to show them the light of day. It was nice, dipping into my past and meeting old friends.

For some years I concentrated on doing life studies, using my own models, working in a studio above my garage. I used Anita, who was great to work with,   on many occasions, mostly drawing the whole form each time.  I used  charcoal pencil and willow stick on Grumbacher paper in the image above.

I then did a very different series of images,  focussing on parts of the body, framing sections – all using graphite on paper. This was rather an abstract idea for me, and it took a while to get used to drawing pieces like this. I produced nine, framed them  and sold some.

Then, I thought I’d try my hand at painting some of these abstracted nudes. For some reason I can’t recall, I decided to focus on the lower trunk and feet. I figured that I wouldn’t be able to keep the model posed for the time it might take to paint an image, so I took photos of her in posing in various ways, with her sitting on her feet. I also did several pencil sketches of her feet, as an aid for use in the painting to come.

I love these studies below.

And, what did one of those paintings look like? See below, – in acrylic on stretched canvas.

Thanks  Anita. It was good to remember an old friend, and fine model.