More pastel work

A woman asked if I was using oil pastels last night, and when I told her no, chalk, she said "but your colors look so juicy!" Woot! ;-)
I suppose I should mention (I don't think I've mentioned it yet) - I do a lot of my drawing at The Drawing Workshop in Ravenswood. They have open figure drawing sessions twice a week, $15 for three hours of poses, ranging from 40 seconds to 25 minutes.
I'm trying to draw more at home though, since six hours a week is really not much time.
Speaking of Ravenswood- and I'm going to really out myself as laaaaazy here- I keep wondering where Ravenswood Manor is, the neighborhood our illustrious impeached governor lives in. The number of times I have wondered that wonder, you might think I would've googled it by now, right? I suppose I'm holding out hope that one day while traveling through the area, I'll catch sight of Blago and figure it out from there. You know, saving myself the trouble of having to do all that typing. Like, what I've just done here...
Anyhoo- we don't need to talk about that anymore. Here are some more iPhone photos of drawings, slightly less crappy picture-taking than usual.

Quick post.

I have to make this quick, because- and I readily admit, this is a ridiculous reason- Davey wants to go upstairs to bed. It'd be one thing if Davey were, say, a four-year-old child. He's not though. He's our seven-year-old Australian-shepherd/German-shepherd mix. He wants to go to bed, but he doesn't like going up by himself. And we give in to his wants. Sigh.

Anyhoo... I have a whole bunch of crappy pictures of figure drawings in pastels. I decided to be brave and start working in color again, and good gravy! I forgot how much I like pastels! And color! I'm thinking though... I really like to coat on the pastel- layers and layers. And that's so non-permanent, isn't it? So I probably need to get back to oils. Which brings in the problem of where to farging paint and 1) not give myself brain damage with the odors and 2) not make a total mess of the place. We're talking about eventually turning our useless garage into a studio, but in the meantime, I think I'm going to look for some studio space. Actually, I'm looking at applying to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to get a certificate in painting. I did some painting for my BFA, but mostly drawing and photography.

Blah blah blah - I said this was going to be quick, didn't I? Drawings below.

Blah!

I am doing a terrible job of blogging regularly. Unless you consider it the context of how well I blogged previously. In which case, I rock. So, boo. Yay!

The "blah" of the title isn't actually about me blogging poorly/well(ly?). It's for another reason. I think I'm getting sick- for the first time this winter. Except it's not winter, it's freaking spring! I was almooooost clear of it. Meh. Or, blah.

I don't have any new photos of drawings, although I have plenty of new drawings to take photos of. There hasn't been much in the way of good light to take them though, and our lighting in the house? Terrible. Well, as you can tell from the pictures I've already posted.
But, I will take some new pics soon. The weather's getting nicer, we're actually seeing sunshine again. Woot!

In the meantime- we've been to a number of shows recently. One of my favorites was this past Friday at Ronny's in Logan Square. American Draft and the Werewolfs (sic) opened for OSO. We didn't stay for OSO though because we're old and lame and can't stay up past midnight. Okay, not quite true, since when we left we went to Taco Burrito House for "dinner" and definitely didn't get home before midnight. But you get the point.

So, the bands. The Werewolfs were good- they have a chick drummer who really rocks. She was wailing away, and really kicked ass. But American Draft- I love American Draft. http://www.myspace.com/americandraft Their music is nearly all instrumental, and it's very- I don't know- cinematic? Sometimes instrumentals just fade into the background and are more about white noise, but their stuff definitely is not. Well, first of all, it's loud, so it'd be bad white noise to begin with. But aside from that obvious tidbit, it's so energetic and alive, and feels like there's a story happening in it.

As far as Ronnie's- that was the first time we'd been there. And I was a little concerned after reading the reviews it got on Yelp. Dirty, filthy, worst bar ever... Okay, so it wasn't exactly what I'd call spic and span. But worst bar ever? Noooo. Lots of interesting people- definitely a melange of types. And plenty to look at. It has what my mom would call "character." (She's a greasy spoon aficianado, and turned me- kicking and screaming- into one too.) I suppose for full disclosure though, I should mention that I'm from the U.P. So my standards for what's considered a dirty, filthy, worst bar ever are pret-ty high. Or would that be low?

Okay, so blah blah blah. All that to say, it was a great show, in a very interesting bar.