A while back I posted a blog entry called “Fun with Nudes”, which was delightedly received by my cohorts at the Saturday Life Group, whose motto is “I see naked people”. Teapots may not have quite the same resonance, but they are shapely. These drawings are from the NHIA class that I am taking with Peter Clive. And it really IS fun to capture the lights, reflections, shapeliness of random life objects deposited on a table with no special organization or composition. We students are spread on all sides of the table, and whatever object lands in front is pretty much what we get to draw. The one above, “Teapots against Black”, was the last one I drew and it was done very quickly. My original effort is below.

Before I started the black one, Peter Clive had suggested to me that I fill in this background with black, and I think now that would have been a good thing to do, so please imagine this one against a black background. The title will have to be “Teapots with Eagle.”

A brass horse has found its way to the table for three weeks running. I avoided it last week, but here he is from the previous two weeks.

“Brass Horse” and “Brass Horse and Mask”, respectively.

Still life has has always conjured up for me images of fruits and flowers and their containers. I have collected a fair number of fruit and flower paintings by other artists. (One of my favorites is Jelaine Faunce from Nevada.) I have never yearned to paint fruits myself, maybe because the challenge they seem to pose is the realism of the rendering–not my cup of tea. But drawing these crazy ill-composed unrelated objects with colored pencils, crayons, charcoal, inks, etc. without rules, rhymes or reasons has just been a blast.

Next week, the class will be drawing from a live person, so this may be the end of my flirtation with Still Life as a subject matter.

Just to keep them all together, here are the pieces Still Life No. 1 and No. 2 that I posted in a previous blog entry. No. 1 is a painting, not a drawing, and actually predates (I think) the beginning of the drawing class.

That suitcase has found its way into the last drawing, with which I opened this entry, the one on black background. Full circle.