Raw Nude

What a nude of mine looks like before I work it over? I already showed you one or two... Here is another one, of a model called Marie Lise, not a perfect one, physically (some small spine defect and getting fatter) but nice and with sad eyes and a nose that French call "un nez retrousé" (snub-nosed?)... In all, a pleasant enough model to draw - and then to paint...

Right now, I'm experimenting with mixing acrylics, watercolors and oil pastels (I made a hole in my budget and bought a few Rembrandt and Holbein oil pastels) but the results aren't yet that conclusive (they usually aren't at the beginning... You can see one sample at my other site "Danu's Small World" This combination, acrylic colors and inks, watercolors and oil pastels (or dry pastels - but with then it's a bore to fix...) is a very promising one and I think Degas would have loved it. I often fantasize what some great artists like Manet, Renoir, Monet, Cézanne or Van Gogh would have done with today art materials... acrylics especially...

Bloody allegory...

A sample of what I did in "hostile" conditions... I mean, when the model (upon whom I have no control, being just one of the many sketchers...) took "ballet" postures... No comments...Of course, it's an acylic ink + watercolor on Strathomore 300 g.

2005 Nude...the beginning...

Maybe this Nude is not the very first one where I started to mix acrylic inks with watercolor, where I've started to define my technique to paint the nudes... But it's one of the first...Rapid sketching was always, since my childhood, one of my greatest pleasures and if I did not have often the chance to draw after a nude model it's only because there weren't a lot of models in Romania of my youth... In fact, it was a very prude (apparently) country and to find a young, well proportioned "model" was very difficult even for the Art Schools (I remember that ours had to employ one of the young secretaries, who needed badly the money).Here, in Québec, after the "révolution tranquile" doesn't seem to be a problem and the models are almost always good enough and young enough. But in communist Romania, model would very easily translate into "whore" or "person of lewd conduct"...When I was in the last year at the ART School I remember that a group of us, preparing for the University, managed to convince (sacrificing a lot of our economies) a lady to pose. But she was fatish and oldish and not very clean and that wasn't an experience either of us - four boys and two girls - remembered with pleasure. Sure, we laughed a bit (cruel as teenager can be) but it wasn't a pleasant experience... Not even a good occasion to exercise our draughtmen/women talents since the lady was even more jumpy than ourselves and emphatically FORBAD us to draw her face... All we got were some headless (or faceless) sketches of a poor, scared, fatish woman...(Now, I understand her: I wouldn't wish myself to pose for 6 teenagers!!!) Something like the "Sorrow" Vincent Van Gogh did after Christine, the drunken prostitute... I will post something alike and a 2005 nude (where I started to use color in my nudes).

Another nostalgia drawing...

I suppose that everyone has his nostalgia (usually it is more than one...) One of mine is the nostalgia of my children, when they were still children... Less than 8-9 years old... Especially, I have the nostalgia of my daughter when she was 6-7 years old. Very sweet, still willing to pose for me, sometimes (at least for photos) and still unshamed that I am not either rich nor famous... In fact, I do not know (nor have I the courage to ask) what she thinks (or feels) right now. She is a young woman, living her life apart, with very very few threads of contact with me or her mother... I wish I could help her more, I wish I could protect her from the harshness and dangers of life. But I can't... So, every time I draw a little girl of 7-8-9 years old, I think of her... How she was. How she changed... How we all changed (for some of us means growing up, for some other growing down... (Not sure that the expression exists but it's relevant.) This is just a pencil drawing of a beautiful young girl, with that grace and beauty my daughter had also...

I take comissions... I sell paintings...

Not that I want to very much... But, after all, I am a professional visual artist. Capable to do a lot in drawing (story board for cinema included...), painting (portrait, landscapes, nudes, weird stuff. you name it...) or photography and digital art (inclusively combinations of drawing&painting and digital manipulated images...) In a word, I can do a lot of things. I got talent, experience, imagination and plenty of other hidden talents. The problem is that almost nobody seem to care. Or to need my multiple talents... Do I sound to you dissapointed? Well, I kind of AM... there are a lot of other artists, good artists out there... but there are also A LOT much worst than myself earning wads of money... I wouldn't give a damn, in fact, if artist materials would be for free and if I wouldn't feel a bit under estimated, and not used at my true value... Anyhow, this painting was a comission. I just wanted to show you I'm able to do it, just like I did it with the portraits. La bohème continue anyway and, eventually, a new Ambroise Vollard will sign a contract with me the way the real Vollard signed with Gauguin, at the end... And I'll draw and paint all day without giving a rat's ass about whatever... Just pouring my dark soul onto paper and canvas...

Casandra's story

She was a little girl of 12. But when you look at her you wouldn't give her more than 7-8 years old. She was slim (not to say skinny). She had big, blue eyes (beautiful eyes!)and 2 big, too big, front teeth. In fact, she looked just like a skinny, very hungry, nervous she-rabbit. Put some big, grossly rim glasses on her nose and you have almost her portrait true to life... Final touches: a runny nose, a stressed, anguished mother-hen look (she had at least two visible smaller brothers, all ultra-extra agitated and hyper active, all with runny noses and beautiful blue ayes...) And, cherry on the cake, somebody inspired gave her the bad-fated name of Casandra... Finally, she spoke the parisian outskirts dialect - because she, and her brother and her father and mother (those last ones weren't visible for the moment; probably buying - and drinking - beer, somewhere in the Jacques Cartier parc in Sherbrooke, Québec) were Francais de France. She was the in-charge-"mother" and when me and my friend Clement propose her to make her portrait she wasn't sure, at the beginning. She looked for her little brothers and only when we proposed to do their portraits too (which made them less agitated, having on them a ritalin-like effect...) she accepted. To tell you I felt a warm compassion for her would be an understatment... Drawing her portrait - twice, in order to conserve one portrait: the one you are looking at...) we knew a bit more about her life... At twelve, she was remplacing the mother - I'm afraid in more ways than one! - of a large family of poor Frnçais de France immigrated to Québec. I don't think she had a lot of gifts - personal gifts - coming her way, lately (or ever) so she was very glad when she had the watercolor and the pastel portraits we did of her. Especially that I did my best (for once!) to embelish her a bit. Let aside the runny nose, ameliorate a bit her big front teeth and gave all the color to her truly beautiful eyes. That day I was pretty satisfyied with myself. A good deed is a good deed. At the Last Judgement, I hope, the Lord will take it into consideration to balance my numerous sins...

Irises 2

I don't paint a lot of flowers. Not that I don't like them... It's just that I find people (and nude ladies) much more interesting... But this Irises were different: first of all, they surprised me. I know Van Gogh painted some (probably one of the most famous painting of the National Gallery in Ottawa...) and that's really a major challenge and then, I stumbled over some Irises in the parc of the private Institution were I teach "artistical expression". In fact, some pupil of mine, told me about... I took some pictures (and I was surprised that they were living practically in the mud or even in the water)... I've painted a series of 3-4 painting with those photos as an inspiration. I've already let you see one (with a grasshopper in it) and this is another one.... It,s an acrylic painting with a few watercolor touches.