Tatiana

“When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity. The distinction between crime and justice is no greater.”

George Bernard Shaw

This lovely animal was in the news not too long ago involving tragic death at a zoo in San Francisco. The tiger was being a tiger. The humans being humans. Neither had a pretty outcome and both completely unnecessary.

I have views about the concept of zoos. While they do allow intimate views of animals that would never ordinarily be observed, they also house animals in a confined, often hostile environment, especially large animals, such a tigers who have much larger territories than a penned enclosure.
Mental and physical problems arise in the animals and they often react, both as a wild animals should and as stressed wild animals should. However, humans always conclude this behaviour as out of character for the animal.

I'm always on the side of the animal.

Radio

Radio Man
Charcoal on newsprint
copyright Jeanette Jobson

I saw the reference for this sketch in the Weekend Drawing Event at WetCanvas and the 1950's feel of it appealed.

I'm a radio fan. Not music stations which, in most cases, irritate me. At least the 'popular' ones. The radio I listen to has more voices, conversations, questions, news and interviews than music. When music reaches across the airwaves, it is related to the person being interviewed or connected somehow to the situation. It isn't strident and doesn't disrupt my world.

However, it isn't what my clock radio is set to wake me with. That is one of the 'popular' stations which is loud and annoying and guaranteed to get me out of bed just to shut it off!

I continue my radio world late into the night as television holds no interest for me, except for a couple of programs a week. Late night enters a new realm with radio. There international interviews and interesting forays into others lives transport me and make me think. Without radio, I would never have known about the artist models strike in Italy the other day, along with an interview with an Italian art model. What did they do when they went on strike? What else? They kept their clothes on.

Re-tagged

The naughty, wonderful Rose of Rose's Art Lines has tagged me to reveal 5 more strange and wonderful things about myself. Not one to be a party pooper, I decided to dig deep and find the requisite five uncommon things that few know about me.

1. When I was a small child, in the fall and winter, I used to find mice in the old house we lived in. I would catch them and put them in my little metal school lunch tin (those people of a 'certain age' will remember those) and feed them birdseed and bread crusts. They were my 'pets'. Til my mother found out. I still have a fondness for the little creatures, I just don't want them over-running my house. There's enough in the barn.

2. I have had 2.5 children. I lost a baby at 20 weeks of pregnancy and he/she would be 26 now if all had gone as planned.

3. As a teenager I was horse mad and used to muck out stables and exercise the wilder horses to earn the privilege of riding the horse of my choice. My favourite horse, Ted, an ex racer, had badly injured his leg and he was going to be put down. I begged and pleaded them not too, promising to care for him til the stable finally relented. Every day I would walk to the stable and take Ted to a pond, standing with him in the cool water, to take down the swelling in his leg. After about 3 or 4 months of this, his leg improved enough for him to be ridden again. He couldn't run as fast as previously but he could still move pretty fast.

4. I owned an MGB GT in the UK and before I sold the car, I first sold the license plate for 450 pounds to a collector in Sussex through an agency in London. The plate number was AAA 660 which I guess had some significance to the buyer. I was just happy to have the money!

5. I adore cheese, most any kind. If left to my own devices, I would probably live on cheese and crackers or toast forever.

I know most of my blogging friends have been overtagged, but I would like to invite a few of my newer blogging friends to participate and share a little about themselves in 5 facts and pass on the idea to more of their friends. If anyone doesn't want to participate, that's fine too.

Cindy Haase of Color On! has done some amazing work with rocks.
Jan Gibson - Pets to Posies I have known from another art forum and she also introduced me to colourfix paper. She does beautiful animal portraits.
Gina Cuff - Dogberry Hill Studio is another Newfoundland artist who does amazing work in art and jewellery.
Terry Banderas - Terry's Ink and Watercolour. Terry creates beautiful, strong pieces full of colour and light.

The learning curve

To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word 'nude,' on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled and defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous, and confident body: the body re-formed.

- Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form

My marathon life class was last night and we had a very energetic model. I always find it a little amusing how male models nearly always use poles and ropes in creating poses to show movement, while female models, for the most part tend to adopt more natural poses. I found an interesting article Reviewing the Nude, Art Journal, Spring, 1999 by Leslie Bostrom, Marlene Malik that examines the role of models.

As usual, we started off with one minute poses....I'm beginning to hate those. Well not, not beginning. I've always hated one minute poses. It takes me more time to detach my paper from the easel than it does to do the one minute sketch. While they are useful as warm ups, too many one, two or three minute poses become tedious to me and I want to get on with the 'meat' of the class - longer poses. In this class we don't have anything longer than 20 minutes. Perhaps it was my mood or the huge chunk of compressed charcoal I was encouraged to draw with, but I struggled with these sketches and didn't do any of them much justice I'm afraid.

I've been reviewing the process of how I draw in my head and believe that I am well stuck in a detail rut where I love precise, small scale drawings full of control and realism. In twenty minutes I can only begin to scratch the surface in terms of my comfort level in getting down realistic lines and shapes. Shading is a whole different story in a short time frame. I'm just starting to develop the shapes and BAM, the time is gone. I'm usually the one whining 'awwww geeeeezzz!' when the instructor says the pose is finished.

That gap of 20 plus years since life class is showing me that the re-learning curve is steeper than I thought it would be.

Do you remember when....

Cake tasted so new that you had to explore with all your senses?

And one hand just wasn't good enough? You had to use both hands - and it took concentration.

Ok, so you got a little messy...but it WAS good, wasn't it?

So good in fact, that you just had to lick the plate clean...

My grand daughter's first birthday. I think she enjoyed the cake, don't you?

One year

Today is my grand daughter's first birthday. It doesn't seem a year since the world changed and brought her into my life. From the tiny newborn that I visited in Calgary in February to the now crawling, nearly walking girl she's become, it makes me realize how quickly time goes by and how swiftly children grow and change.

The sketch I did above when she was less than a month old to the image below of her shows the changes so clearly. I will try a portrait of her as soon as I can to capture her first year and preserve it for the future. Yes, it can be done in photographs, but for my own selfish reasons, I like to explore every curve of her face and sear it into my memory as only a drawing can do.

I can't be with them for celebrations, but I'm there in my heart.

Happy Birthday!