Way beyond
Posted: July 21, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 6 CommentsIf you walk beyond the big resorts of Punta Cana (some as vast as city states!), beyond the beach chairs, the volleyball nets, the kids digging holes in the sand, the vendors shouting “Larimar, larimar!”, the banana boats, beyond the pina coladas, the banana mamas, the cervezas and the rum, past the aerobics class, the oiled tans and the pounding beach music, you may be in for a surprise. At first it seems like a mirage in the distance, a mere silhouette of shapes that don’t resemble anything like the artificial village that you have been staying in for the past few days. This is a village of another sort, a type of ramshackle but far more delightful mall on the beach, a series of shacks whose colours become more vibrant as you approach and whose sounds of “hola, hola” become louder and more insistent as you get closer.
Too windy to kayak
Posted: July 20, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 5 CommentsPunta Cana, situated on the far eastern tip of the Dominican Republic, is the point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean, or so I was told by a proud Dominican. It does look like that as well on my Lonely Planet map. That could be why the wind is so strong and the water quite rough at times. Once again, this was sketched standing on the beach and colour was added in the shade. I usually do both the painting and the drawing on the spot so this is a bit different for me and requires some visual memory for the colour. A good exercise, I think.
The real beach
Posted: July 19, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 4 CommentsPainting in the shade of a big palm certainly has its advantages but I haven’t really been representing the beach scene as it really is. For this sketch I moved out into the sun to practice the quick drawing techniques I learned in the Santo Domingo market. Drawing while standing definitely creates a different kind of energy in the pen line and forces you to capture the scene more quickly although perhaps not as accurately.
Watching the boat
Posted: July 18, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 8 CommentsNow that the symposium is over in Santo Domingo I have been thinking about upcoming workshops in Portland and Montreal. Today I focused on different ways to compose a picture. This beach scene was way more chaotic but I eliminated the details that would detract from the composition. Like the beach aerobics class going on in the background ( I saved the topless women in the group for my life drawing exercises later!) and the banana boats flying by in the water.
Blue chairs
Posted: July 17, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 11 CommentsI am not going to write much today because the wi-fi is very slow. But I will say that the beach is better than a life drawing class and when I get back to my scanner I will post my life drawings.
Big palm
Posted: July 16, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 10 CommentsAfter many days of drawing and not too much painting it feels great to get back to full color. It’s going to take some time to absorb all that I learned at the symposium in Santo Domingo and I hope to write about it when I return but for now I think I’ll just let it sink in. There are some sketches from workshops I haven’t even posted yet because I need to think about them a bit more and process the concepts. At some point everything you are learning gets a bit muddled in your head and I think taking some time to write it all down will help me to sift through it all.
Dominos on Parque Colon
Posted: July 15, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 16 CommentsThis sketch is a continuation of “improvising with line and color” workshop. This time the exercise was to incorporate words into the drawing. These men gathered around a lively game of dominos is something I keep coming back to in my work. I drew them from a distance and then got closer to pick up some of the words they were saying – but apparently I don’t remember my high school Spanish very well because some of these are not even real words.
Improvising with lines and color
Posted: July 14, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 5 CommentsIt’s really hard to find a bit of time to post during the USK symposium. When we’re not sketching in the middle of a crowded square there are panel discussions, drink and draw evenings and lots of yakking with other sketchers. There is so much to take in from all the workshops that I think it will take some time before it all gets sorted out in my head.
This morning’s workshop – Improvising with line and color” with Orling Dominguez and Inma Serrano was all about telling the story of Parque Colon, the main square in front of the cathedral. Our challenge was to use line, color and words to describe our surroundings – and the hardest part for me was to put together three scenes into one drawing. I stood in one spot to draw the big guy on the right, another for the family under the tree and a third place for the facade of the cathedral in the back. The last link in the story was Orling’s suggestion of adding the big pigeons in the foreground to cross over the gutter of the spread and bring the drawing together.
Mercado Merengue
Posted: July 13, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 9 CommentsI closed my eyes in the market area today I heard these sounds: a car alarm, a wailing siren, incessant honking and loud merengue music from a passing truck. The workshop that I took this afternoon with Melanie Reim and Natalie Ramirez was called “Mercado Merengue” and it was an apt title because sketching in a crowded market is a bit like a crazy dance. We started by doing thumbnails to capture the feeling of our surroundings. Then we had to sketch people in motion by following one person and drawing them as they moved. The third exercise was to find patterns and add that to the drawing so I picked a man outside his souvenir shop. And the last sketch had to put it all together but we only had 15 minutes left so I drew the banana seller and his motorcycle buddies.
The Decisive Moment
Posted: July 12, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 8 CommentsThe French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was known for his ability to catch “the decisive moment” in his photography. That was the title of the workshop that I took this afternoon with Veronica Lawlor and Jonathon Schmidt. We sketched on Calle Conde – a really crowded pedestrian street. The first 45 minutes were spent observing and doing thumbnail sketches and basically just trying to capture the feeling of the street. Then we had to pick one of our thumbnails and do a drawing that had a story of the street. While I was drawing this group of men gathered around a chess game I noticed that the man on the left was distracted and kept turning around. It took a few minutes before I realized that the group of young female tourists looking in a shop window was far more interesting than the chess game.
