This really should be part one, or maybe part zero, since the other Art Beat stuff I wrote about happened on Thursday, and this was on Wednesday.  I'll just assume that my out-of-order presentation won't cause the universe to collapse upon itself.  I guess if it does, I've got bigger fish to fry.

Anyhow, Wednesday was a lecture and life drawing demo by painter Arvie Smith.  It was pretty interesting to hear him talk about his work (although I wasn't familiar with it beforehand, I could certainly appreciate the confrontational nature of some of his work).  There's not much more to say about that, other than if you get the chance to hear him talk, it's worth your time.

The second part of his visit was a hour-long life drawing demo (although it turned out that he was focusing on painting).  It's always interesting to see how a different instructor approaches such a basic, yet fundamental subject as drawing the figure.  He was much more interested in exploring color and new approaches to mark-making than I was accustomed to (or prepared to deal with, since I was under the impression that it would be a drawing and not a painting demo).  Nonetheless, for being a bit out of practice, I got a few drawings that weren't entirely awful...



Click on any of the images, and it'll take you to a larger version at my Flickr account.  The second drawing, by the way, was drawn left-handed.  Drawing with your non-dominant hand was one of the directives, and by those standards, it turned out okay.  All of these were drawn with china marker in my sketchbook (which was pretty frustrating - the more figure drawing you do, the larger you tend to end up working.  And working in a 9" x 12" sketchbook felt incredibly cramped).

Art Beat is one of the best things that PCC does each year, it's good to have the opportunity to be exposed to working artists, both in seeing presentations of their completed work and by seeing literally how they work.

c.