My 30 day challenge ---- FIGURES

I'm involved in an online "WakeUp Academy" with Heather Madder and Garrett J. White and the challenge there has been to record videos everyday.  I did a few, but have not been successful in that medium, still plan to, just need to flesh out my ideas in ink first, which is where this challenge somewhat arises from.  Mainly I needed to be in the ACTION mode and not still wondering. 

But what really happened to start these drawings is I picked up one of my books

"The Story of Painting" by Sister Wendy Beckett

and I saw these incredibly nice enlargements of paintings and the faces of the individuals in these old paintings which I so dearly love and remember the times that I got to travel to Rome, Florence, Paris, Amsterdam, Brugge to see some of these incredible paintings and sculptures in person.

I couldn't just look at them.....I needed to draw them in my nice sketchbook that I made.

Before when my husband was still alive and he was continuously encouraging me to do figurative work, I couldn't conceive the idea of doing anything other than landscapes which I love and connect with, but in the last year I have been having this feeling that I need to paint and draw more figuratively (maybe my husband is nudging me to still do this)  So before I can paint figures, I need to become reacquainted with them through drawings, thus the drawings.

So I started....

Day 1 first drawing

This is a figure from Pontormo's Deposition 1525/28 

I remember this painting from which this guy comes from.  In Florence, Italy and siting there with my great friend and professor, Bruce Smith.  He was sharing his enthusiasm for the color and the painting.

Day 2

This drawing comes from Robert Campin, "Portrait of a Woman" 1420-30

Still Day 2

I found this one of the Madonna and Child

by Gerard David titled "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt" 1510

From this drawing some sparks are shooting out and some ideas are coming into my mind.

Can't really divulge them but I'm sure you will start to see the evolution in what I start drawing.

Day 3

So today I've been thinking about having models come and pose for me, but I remember some insight I received last summer, that I needed to draw my sons and through drawing them direction and insight would come.  At the time I tried, but didn't persist.

So this is a picture of my husband Ben and my oldest son who was only 17 months when my husband died.  They were in the water in this picture.

This is a rough drying and the pen I am using isn't working out, but

Day 3 drawing #2

I dug up some more photo's of myself with my two sons.

I think of where my life was at this time...I had just had my youngest son, two months prior to this, alone.  I was three months pregnant when my husband died.  So here I was a single mom raising two small children.  Wow, it was a major change.

Yet it is these two boys that kept me going.

Now I look back and am grateful for this huge learning curve.  Learning about what I believe I can do and what I still struggle with.  Yet I am learning more and more that

we are powerful and called to be great!

We are incredible and able to chose how we handle our earth school.

As I draw my sons and myself, I feel an incredible love for my Heavenly Father for blessing me with two wonderful sons and a wonderful husband who shared so much with me for the short time we had together.  Now he continues to teach me and help me, if I will only believe and ask.