Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

It was Easter Friday. We rented a studio behind the Triton Museum of Art. More than ten artists, most of us live nearby, some of them drove from Sacramento and Northern Beach (north of Marin county). We were all ready, waiting for our model who came from San Francisco, an hour drive away. We got started at 11 o'clock. Ended up it worked out for two sessions, because the lunch break was cut by a half an hour, and extended to another half hour long. Nice studio, quite spacious. I started with a used canvas panel 16"x20", actually I sanded my last week's model study off. I noticed that I didn't have enough space for continuing my work after the first break, then I wiped it off, restarted it again. Our model was not very stable, so it was challenging for us to settle down our sketches and continue on with our work. We all painted quietly, only could hear the sound of brushes moving up and down on canvas. One of the artists brought a half bag of mandarins from her tree

We are lucky to have a program that allow us practice on live figures in the studio.  I have been working on drawing and painting from live models for a year and a half now.  Found out that good models are very important to artists when studying them live.   Tonight we had a new model, she was introduced as working towards her graduation at Stanford University.  What a smart student and working hard too.  Also she is a good model, deserved generous tips. Short pose drawings are challenging, never feel that you have enough time to draw one properly. Actually it really depends on the artist, how many years experience of the drawing skill, what the artist wants to experiment with etc.  Some of artists now draw on an electric device like iPad for digital drawing.  To me after I stopped working as a graphic designer, I don't have much interest in working on computer any more, because I feel I have had enough.  I really enjoy working with traditional drawing and painting tools, like cha

Drove to the studio during rush hour, and surprisingly there was no traffic jam on #101. Many new faces there. One thing I am sure of is that they were much younger than me. Allan was a wonderful model, though I don't get enough practice drawing male figures. I did OK, and the younger artists gave me complements, or some of them gave me a look that told me I did well. All I know is how long I have been struggling on drawing short poses, and I have been practicing for over a year and half now. To all the younger age artists, they have plenty time to catch up in their skills. (April 11 2023)

I haven't done a figure study for a while. Went to studio earlier to get a better seat.   Might be the model was too directly in front of me, and it wasn't easy to adjust her legs crossing each other. Not happy with the result after one three-hour session, I am not going back to correct my work next session, because I know that I should practice more.  (March 30 2023) Also I haven't practiced figure drawings. Glad that I went to draw from the live model.  Not only she was a good one, but I know I need to work on m anatomy to understand the human body better. (April 4 2023)