Landscapes and other sketches

Just yesterday I went back from a week long winter art camp with kids from my atelier. It was a lot of fun, full of work and filled with heaps of inspiration. :)

Tempera on paper, around A3 in size.
This was sadly the only landscape from life I was able to paint there. I only  managed to paint for some 40 minutes and even then, I was in our work room with the kids who decided to stay with me after their classes - so I was giving critiques to everyone around me at the same time.

Oil sketch from today.
First time ever painting the outside view from my apartment.  

Oil color study of Monet's study of a Rouen cathedral.
I wish I had something more than a  postcard-sized copy of this while I painted it, would be much easier to  work on it!

Color study in oil.
Heavily inspired by this picture of the Neuschwanstein castle in Bavaria.

Pencil sketch

Watercolor sketch loosely based off the previous one

Pencil sketch, a little bit of an experiment between careful shape design vs. loose organic lines.

Only other drawing from life I made (and kept) during last week. A beautiful art nouveau lamp from the palace we were staying at. I wish I worked on the glow effect of it more.

A portrait of a model at the atelier I did some 2 weeks ago. The model was lovely but she certainly didn't care about not moving while posing. Which I guess made it even more intense to draw.

A very quick watercolor study of a small part of a Zorn painting.  Again, I wish I had more than a museum postcard to study it from -- the lady on my version was smaller than one inch in size... Though obviously it didn't stop me! ;)
It's lighter in color in real life.

I am really hoping that soon enough I will be able to work from my studio space and show you all works that I will have spent more than two hours on!
Take care!

Some unfinished projects

Some of the projects that I've begun last month, I suppose they'll have to wait till 2013 till I work on them some more :)

 Charcoal portrait of an acquaintance, Anna - the drawing still needs polishing up, there was only one sitting session - approx. 30x60cm in size

2hr oil sketch of a baby head cast

Dogs again

Doodlin' some imaginary dogs...

...aaaand my dog Spike. Sleeping as he often does.

It was really loads of fun to do these -- though I'm not too used to actual living animals as models to be honest. :) Gotta fix that! There's no natural history museum in Warsaw that has as many stuffed animals as the one in Goteborg so I suppose it's the universe's way of advising me to do more life drawings. :)

Model drawing

Since I've started working at Warsaw's Atelier Foksal this September I've been occasionally sneaking into some of the drawing classes to draw their model. Sometimes I could only attend for a short amount of time because I had to assist in classes taking place at the same time. But I'm always happy to be there no matter how long or short. :)

This wasn't actually in class, I drew this one off one of the sculptures at the Warsaw's National Gallery.
The sculpture is a bust of Antonina Krasińska née Czacka by Antonio d'Este from 1808. Or at least that's what I noted down.

That was a pretty loose and fast warm-up sketch I needed to wrap up quickly because I was needed elsewhere

And this was drawn the same day, after my classes, and I could take more time with it. It also helped that I studied it earlier with the previous sketch. :)

When in doubt, paint a princess

Today I've been having a hard time with a painting I've been recently working at. At some point I decided to screw it for now and use the leftover paint for a Snow White speedpaint (~15 mins).
Lately I've been in love with paintings that are build up with very soft brushstrokes and toned palette, like Auguste Renoir's or Olga Boznańska's (whose works I'm always so happy to see at Warsaw's National Gallery).

oil on canvas, 24x24cm

Hopefully later today it will be easier for me to work on the bigger project, but for now - lunch break. :)

Shamanism

I am always inspired by certain roughness and primitive -- yet, in a way, sophisticated -- character of shamanic rituals and apparel. I love the fact these otherworldly traditions can be observed in just any part of the globe - from Lappland to Oceania - so the subject seems to be a limitless supply of inspiration to explore.  Following are sketches I did just to get things going, I am with all certainty going to develop this artistic research further. :)

I actually went quite far with developing the idea from the far right -- but it was digital, and the computer I was working at died, taking the work with it to the grave. I'm not giving up on it though, I will likely restart after I get my pc fixed. :)

Awakening

Finally got around scanning some older works of mine.

I roughly titled this drawing "Awakening" (or rather, Polish "Przebudzenie") and it kinda stayed like that. It seems an adequately titled piece to submit after such long absence of updates.

pencil on toned paper, 21x30cm

a quick study of a tree branch

Will post more works soon!