Pastel life drawing and Reverse Picasso

When I overcome my dislike of their dry dusty feeling, I find that pastels are a great medium, especially if you love bright colours. I often find that the less I blend colours the better the drawing works. I tried to use the pastels tonally without caring so much about the precise colour. My brain usually stops focussing properly after about 3 or 4 hours, at which point I like to draw other people with superior concentration spans finishing their paintings; the sketch shows Milan Ivanic painting a portrait. The following day I saw the Abstruse Goose cartoon.

Cute lemur family and misanthropic rant

Finished painting the gentle lemur family into my latest Ako Project poster today (Lac Aloatra, in north central Madagascar) It feels like it's going slowly but I've not had so much time to work in my studio recently, compared to over the summer which was when I was meant to be painting it. It was held up because a key advisor in Madagascar was pursuing an armed gang of tortoise smugglers. The gang were caught eventually. This sounds pretty funny but rare species smuggling is a massive problem in Madagascar, and all over the world. As long as people want to eat lemurs, sharks fin, tortoises, or make medicine from bear bile or tiger bone, etc etc, the trade will continue, and it's all just so unnecessary. This needless cruelty and destruction is what makes me personally so angry; similar to humans choosing to eat animals produced by battery farming methods, or fish taken from the rapidly emptying oceans. I'm afraid I've become a truly embittered misanthrope. You can, however, just look at the cute lemur picture.

My lightswitches are black

...but I spent a productive hour drawing a self portrait. I wanted to see whether the exercise I plan to set my class on Tuesday is actually possible in the time they have. Take a coloured pastel and smudge it all over the page, draw a head with charcoal, remove highlights with a putty rubber. Make lots of mess and revel in it. No hand washing allowed (well they can if they like, but there's no point). I remember someone once challenging me to eat a sugary doughnut without licking my lips, it's the same sort of thing. Fight against the urge to make everything neat and clean. Some people find that more difficult than others!

ps. If I appear somewhat peaky in this photo it is possibly linked with the fact I was at my friends most excellent wedding reception last night.