Visual Feast - Shirley Visions of Reality

The Melbourne International Film Festival brought a real treat - a film by Gustav Deutsch called
Shirley Visions of Reality.
The synopsis is:
13 of Edward Hopper’s paintings are brought alive by the film, telling the story of a woman, whose thoughts, emotions and contemplations lets us observe an era in American history.

It was a joy to sit for an hour and more looking intensely at the Hopper images brought to life. The promotional picture of a woman on a bed looking out of a window is an indication of the mood of the film.

The re-creation of the other  12 paintings, with real actors who bear a very close resemblance to the figures in the original paintings is mesmerising. The narrative moves from the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s to the early ‘60s.

In the images below, he top image is from the film - the bottom is the Hopper painiting

 

Hopper's work  was influenced by film noir –  as the director says in his statement  - in his choice of lighting, subject and framing as seen in paintings such as Night Windows (1938), Office at Night (1940), Room in New York (1932) and his irect references to cinema such as in New York Movie (1939) and Intermission (1963) – and on the other hand influenced filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Jim Jarmusch, Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders.

It is really worth looking at the website for the film - and keeping a look out for the film - if you get a chance to see it, do!



 

Arum lilies

Back to chilly Melbourne and  off to class with Lazar Krum.
Today I chose to draw the lilies that Lazar had brought in - using a charcoal drawing, then an acrylic wash.
A study and a more worked up piece. The time flies especially when there are conversations to catch up on and information to share with a friendly group. It is such a terrific, relaxed place to be.

Architectural drawing and paper preparation

We knew that architectural drawing was going to be hard.

First we prepared paper with colours and stains as you can see below.... dirt, coffee, waterclour. But the purple and blue were made by the coloured berries below the picture. Some people also applied colour using flower petals from the garden.

Then when the paper was quite dry,  we covered the sheet with charcoal

 then we chose a subject and worked on rubbing the charcoal off again to create the white, and filling in with black compressed charcoal  to achieve the darks - you can just see the colours of the preapared paper peeping through

Pastel drawing

This was a new technique for me,
Start with the basic drawing using a mid tone - a contour drawing essentially in a colour not related to the subject - in this case, persimmons.
I chose purple.
Next step is to fill in the lights and darks using complementary colours - again, not related to the local colour - i.e. greens and blue for sky etc.

The next step is to complete the drawing with local colour - i.e. the colour you can actually see, but leaving some of the under colour showing in a sketchy kind of way.

It was a very challenging exercise set by Suzi Davidoff, but it was rewarding as the finished work has a depth that would not be there otherwise.

Solar Plate Etching

These are the proof prints from the plates I created on the Flatbed Press Summer Intensive at La Romita.
They are black and white - to see what is on the plate. Now I need to add some colour and chin colle etc to mae them come alive and be a bit more interesting.

Last drawing of the course

I was keen to draw together some of the techniques and ideas that I had gathered over the 2 weeks.
I began by preparing paper with some ink stain and some watercolour.
Then I pasted rice paper prints from my printmaking series on top of the paper and let it dry thoroughly

Then I took myself out into the garden to where I drew on the first day of the drawing class, and chose the same bush (it meant I could stay in the shade) and spend the day drawing on and off.

And here is the final  result.

I think that it worked well

Chine colle

This is a test plate that I chine colled. I had been trying to determine the right density of black and white for a transparency to make a solar plate, and my teacher Katherine in kindly made a small plate for me to test. It is  about 4 inches square and I quite like it

Chine colle is when you combine the print with another loose piece of paper - in this case it was yellow paper.