NEW TERM STARTING APRIL 30TH AND MAY 3RD

This is just a short post to say that I’m now taking bookings for the Summer 2012 term at Brunel Field and Bristol Grammar school. As before,the cost will be £57 for ten weeks. To book a place you’ll need to email willstevens@lifedrawingclasses.co.uk and I’ll let you know how it all works.

LIFE DRAWING STARTING THIS WEEK

Blimey, has it come around already?   Indeed it has, the latest instalment of Wills life drawing classes will be starting again next Monday and Thursday. If you’re a regular group member and you’re checking in I hope that answers your question, if you’ve just found out it’s not too late to get in touch, just send me an email, but do get your skates on!

NEW TERM STARTS ON JANUARY 16TH

The Autumn term is now over but fear not we’ll back for a new term in 2012.  The Monday evening class will continue to be held at Brunel Field from 7 until 9pm on Mondays starting on the 16th January.  The Thursday class will continue as of the 19th.  It’s been a really successful term and a lot of the people who attended this year have signed up to come back but there is still a bit of space so get in touch if you’d like to come.  Happy Christmas and New Year everybody! Oh, and the price for the new term will be £57. The images above are from the new life drawing venue at Brunel Field and images by Colin Wise and John Leggat

HALF TERM THIS WEEK

Just in case you weren’t sure it’s half term this week (i.e. October 24th and 27th)

MISSED THE START OF TERM? HERE’S WHAT TO DO.

If you’ve missed the start of term, don’t panic, I have one or two places left. If you get your skates on I can still fit you in at a reduced rate for the remaining sessions, contact willstevens@lifedrawingclasses.co.uk for more information.

LIFE DRAWING STARTS ON THE 12TH AND 15TH SEPTEMBER

A know a lot of regular group members like to check in at this time of year to make sure the class is running so this is for you, and indeed anyone else who might be interested. Well, here we are again,and a new term is about to begin. If you’re in the North Bristol area or only available on Mondays the life drawing class at Brunel Field will be starting on the 12th September at 7pm.  Brunel Field is a new building, (it was only opened in January) located in the grounds of the City of Bristol College on Ashley Down Rd.  The regular Bristol Grammar school class which runs on Thursdays will begin again on the 15th September at 7pm.  The cost is £56 for ten sessions and if you’d like to come along you can either phone me on 0117-9396584 or email willstevens@lifedrawingclasses.co.uk. Because I’ve now got two classes running I can allow a certain amount of movement from one class to another so, for example, if you couldn’t make it on a Thursday as long as you email me to warn me you can come on a Monday and vice versa. You could even come to two in one week if you’d missed a previous one.  You would need to let me know in advance if you wanted to do it and I wouldn’t be able to let you carry sessions over to the next term but I hope that if you’re a shift worker, for example then this will help you to get more out of the class. Look forward to seeing you all soon.

William Etty

It’s a bit of a trek from Bristol to York but I’d still be quite interested in seeing the William Etty exhibition that’s on at York Art Gallery. It’s on until January 2012 so it may well be still be possible. His use of the nude was controversial during his life time (1787-1849) JMW Turner, one of his friends apparently described his painting *Youth on the Prow and Pleasure at the helm”, oh dear,  as a “bum boat”  though he saw himself as a moralist his figures were considered too earthy and voluptuous for contemporary tastes. Anyway, see what you think.  There’s a pretty good article on him from the Independent newspaper here if you want to find out more.

Ian Williamson’s new website

 

Ian is the latest group member to put his stuff up on the web.  It’s really nice and you should go and have a look.  There’s some really good life drawings as well as some sensitive family studies.  He’s also been able to get some stuff into this years Clevedon Arts Club exhibition. How does he find the time to hold down a full time job and do all this?

On a personal level I was fascinated to learn that Ian’s first efforts were doing illustrations for fantasy role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Tunnels and Trolls back in the 80s when I was a nipper.  I’ve been trying to get him to bring some of them along for me to look at but I think he sees that as “all in the past”. Perhaps I could dig out some percentile dice and we could decide that way eh Ian?heh heh.

http://www.ianwilliamsonart.co.uk

THE DARK HEART OF JACK VETTRIANO

The first day of the Jack Vettriano exhibition was on Saturday and it seemed to be pretty busy, although a lot of the people there were because of the book signing (cancelled, unfortunately) by the big man so we’ll have to wait and see if it turns into a big money spinner for the RWA. I genuinely hope so as it seems to be an attempt by the gallery to engage with a wider public. Vettriano isn’t a darling of the critics and I can’t call myself a huge fan but I admire the fact that he’s a successful self taught artist and his sense of design and use of light is good. It’s one of the reasons why his work reproduces well and Mr and Mrs Public obviously respond to the anecdotal quality of his pictures. Get up close though, and they start to look a bit”stodgy” It’d be nice to see him play around with the surface qualities of his pictures for example and use a wash or glaze or two. His drawing also has a lot of the hallmarks of somebody who only ever works from photos. There’s nothing wrong with using photos as source material, artists have been doing it for years but it can be a problem where the photo doesn’t give you enough information. At this point it really helps to have some experience drawing people from other sources such as life. Many of the paintings in this particular exhibition are based on photos of ballroom dancing competitions by Jeanette Jones which you can see on the wall opposite. They’re nice photos but lacking in clear details for a painter, the figures of the male competitors are just dark cut outs really with a hand or two just about visible and little to go on for the arms themselves. In the corresponding Vettriano paintings they just end up looking crude and ventriloquist dummy like and the hands look disappointingly like sausages. A wiser artist might have taken a clearer photo of a person wearing a jacket with his arm in the same position to use as an additional reference rather than just plough on. That’s my opinion, for what it’s worth. I think it’s important to say why you don’t like something rather than just splutter something like “Jack Vettriano is the Osama bin Laden of Art” which is what a lot of Fine Art types would probably tend to do. So that’s my attempt.
Having said that I did learn one suprising thing reading the current issue of the RWA’s free magazine which contains an interview with the artist, Jack is a Simon Bates fan!
“I always work with the radio on. I’m a man who’s lost in a time warp of the ’70s and 80′s. I listen to a station called Smooth–Simon Bates. He does a small piece called Your Story;a real-life love story, with the music they’ve asked for, Very emotional. It brings it all back to me–who I was seeing, why did that go wrong? And believe it or not, very often by the time the song’s over I know what it is I want to paint. A lot of my work is autobiographical, often about the mistakes I’ve made, and the pleasures I’ve had”
If you are under the age of 40 you are probably better off skipping the rest of this article as it just won’t mean a lot to you. but trust me, for alternative types in the 70s and 80s he was truly the Sultan of Smarm! Simon Bates ( who, with the benefit of hindsight is probably quite a nice chap etc) was an uber popular Radio 1 D.J. who would feature an item in his morning show called “Our Tune” where a listener would send a long letter about the ups and downs of their relationship read in Bates’ booming William Shatner-esque delivery. (Lot’s of pauses. In. The Middle of a. Sentence. That kind of thing) This would go on for an incredible length of time, the background music was “The Love Theme from Romeo and |Juliet” by Henry Saloman and His Orchestra and finish with a request to play “Our Tune”. A sample “Our Tune” might describe the relationship between “Kevin” and “Lisa” and how they shyly started dating after bonding over their shared love of bell-ringing/Airfix model kits/C.B. radio/handwriting analysis/jet engines by the office photocopier after which they would move into together but Lisa would then discover that Kevin had a secret love of Barbara Streisand Songs,embarrassing body odour or more usually some form of substance abuse. Their love would endure many ups and downs from that point on. Lisa might move in with “That Dave from Accounts” at which point Kevin would hold up a Securicor lorry with a sub machinegun made out of pieces of balsa wood or may’be a spud gun and be imprisoned for 10 years. They would always be back together again by the end, however and the writer would finish by asking them to play their song, usually something by Billy Joel or Our Kid.
It was a very easily parodied format, and one that Batesy has continued to use over the years in his various radio shows. Go on, do a quick search on YouTube if you don’t believe me. Is this the key to the artist, I wonder.? How could you Jack?!!!!? All I can say is, I will never look at Vettriano’s paintings in. The same way. Ever. Again.
Jack Vettriano exhibits at the R.W.A. 28th June-31st August

LIFE DRAWING OVER SUMMER 2011

If you’re reading this with a view to doing some life drawing over the coming months you have two options. Over the Summer (This is option 1 by the way) I will be running my usual set of sessions up at the church of St Gregory the Great in Horfield. These will be taking place on the following Thursdays from 7 until 9pm July 21 and 28 August 4 18 and 25. The cost of these sessions will be £7.50 but these will need to be paid in advance. I cannot guarantee you a place if you turn up without checking beforehand and preferably I would ask that if you want to come to several of these then you pay as a block. (2 for £15 4 for £30 etc etc)
Alternatively you could join again in September. The days and times are the same as before. You can pop across to www.lifedrawingclasses.co.uk for more info