A peek into my past - Angel Spirits and Anatomy

Angel Spirits

I've been scanning in artwork I've done over the years and am enjoying seeing it on screen. Back when I was doing many of these pieces we didn't have computers and we didn't have the Internet. Over the years I've imagined getting into digitizing some of my work in order to work on it in the digital arena. I haven't tried that yet, but it's on my radar screen. I'll be doing more drawing and painting once I've stocked up the beadwork at Dreamkeeper Creations for the holidays : )

The watercolor painting above is called Angel Spirits and I was playing with texture using salt in the background. I love the softness of the angel, who is an otherworldly being surrounded by various little spirit faces. Near her feet, in green, is a "real-life" boy reading/studying/learning. She is his guardian and helps him though he hasn't learned to see her yet.

I love doing angels and faeries, so you'll see more of these now that I have more time. In order to be able to do the angel and faerie figures, whether they're cartoon style or more realistic, I use my anatomy skills.

Anatomy study after Burne Hogarth

When I was young, one of my goals as an artist was to be able to draw people without a model so I studied anatomy fairly extensively. Burne Hogarth is one of the greatest contemporary teachers to learn from because his drawings are very clear and there's much power to them. The drawing above is a practice copy of one from his book, Dynamic Figure Drawing. I did this one back in 1984, seems like centuries ago.

Anatomy study after Tiepolo

In 2004 I took an art class to brush up on anatomy and the instructor had us choose a drawing to copy from the Old Masters. We learned to use the grid system to reproduce the image. I used charcoal for the drawing above to learn what types of marks Geovanni Battista Tiepolo used in his original drawing entitled "Nude Study."

Study after Cambiasi

Another project for the art class was to choose a classical artist and reproduce one of their drawings using pen and ink. I chose Luca Cambiasi. My drawing above is my attempt to reproduce his rendition of Cain and Abel.

Now it's time to get some beadwork done, so I'll sign off for now. Check back for more of a peek into my past works.

Til then,

Namaste

Jen