Thursday, October 18, 2007

Painting with Ilona; Seeing Differently


This week, I have been painting with Ilona and I have been challenging myself. The picture above is Jean Ehler, she is our model for the portrait class with Ilona. She has that Mona Lisa smile, too! I must confess, I hadn't painted much in oils lately. Not only that I rarely have used a live model or photo.
Often I just create from my mind, even the people are just figments of my imagination. Ilona calls my art, Fantasy. I tend to think of cartoon characters with muscle bound men and women with tiny waists when I think of fantasy art. I do not see my people that way. But maybe they look that way to others. I am not sure, knowing that I see differently.
Drawing people from life is no easy task when you are wearing tri-focal progressive lens glasses. You see when I look down I see larger and when I look up, I see smaller and it is very hard to focus in the process of looking up and down with tri-focals. Now, I have tried it without the glasses and that is even worse. (can't see any details!) Now you know the secret to why I paint from my mind instead of my eyes! Oh what can I say? (life is a blur...sigh)
I am having fun and that is the important thing!
yours truly;

PS you can still get in on the class if you like by calling Sandra Phaup at 803-787-9617.
It runs 10-1 M-F. Each class is only $30. It runs all next week too.

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