My Vancouver Draw Down experience

Saturday I went to the Vancouver Art Gallery to join in the Vancouver Draw Down workshop there. When I arrived, I got paired up with another person & we drew portraits of each other on black paper with white pencils. It's been several years since I did any life drawing, but the old habits came back quickly & I stepped back to literally objectify the person in front of me, focussing on light & dark, form & negative space. It was a fun challenge to use white on black & create the image by layering white cross-hatching to bring up the lighter portions of her face, the opposite of the usual adding in of line & shadow. As we were both drawing I moving our heads constantly, it was tough to get a really accurate likeness, but I'm happy that I got a sense of her. Here is my drawing & my model with hers:

I wish I'd gotten out of the house sooner so I could have visited more workshops, but I'm happy I made it to one. I can't wait til next year--maybe Sprout will be old enough to be interested in drawing images by then. At the moment he likes to use crayons & markers, but he just scribbles.

After I drew my portrait, I looked around the Matisse show at the gallery. Calling it a Matisse show isn't really the whole story, however. The works on display are from the collection of the Cone sisters, two avid modern art collectors from Baltimore. As you walk through the exhibit, you're introduced to Etta & Claribel Cone, their travels & the incredible amount of art they collected. I really enjoyed watching a short BBC documentary showing in the gallery on the Cone sisters, hosted by Michael Palin.

Collecting Matisse & Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore is on at the Vancouver Art Gallery until September 30.