5 hours later....

I just finished reading a book about figure drawing and chiaroscuro.  Let's just say my paintings were lacking in lifelike qualities prior to reading up on some different techniques.  I'm trying to see the figure as more shapes and values than lines.  Check out tonight's sketch below.  My crazy work friends joke that I am going to "finger painting" class instead of "figure painting".   Hopefully this will prove that in fact I am not attending finger painting.. :-)

Also- in watercolor class this week we studied Charles Burchfield.  His art is depressing and flat but I thought it was interesting that everything he painted at one point was a view out of one of his windows.  He lived in Detroit in the early 1900s- perhaps this is why his paintings are depressing.  Anyway, I also painted a view out of one of my windows for class this week.  This painting is the view I stared out the window at every day I sat at the desk in my studio in London.  I will never forget the color gray that sky was day after day...

I just started a new watercolor this week and it's the first time in a while I fee like I just hate it.  I'm hopeful it will turn around.  Lately I'm feeling like it's so much easier to achieve the painterly quality I love with pastels instead of watercolors.  My bricks turned out ok  in the painting on the left, but it looks like the same rigid painting I always do.  Whatever- perhaps this will change with time. Either way, it's another painting for my England series. I love the cool chimneys all the houses have in London so I'm glad I worked it into a painting.  I'll be ready whenever I get that call for a one man show of 15 paintings in a series!