NEWS

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:47:55 +0000

Workshop:

How to Draw Accurately

MARCH 2010

Blaise Smith will hold a three-day drawing workshop in Borris House from

29th - 31st March 2010.

"It is possible to learn to draw accurately. There is no magic to it. Certainly, like music some can initially have more flair for it but everybody can learn simple methods for making an accurate representation of what they see before them." Blaise Smith

(Watch a time lapse of Blaise drawing here.)

Working from the model Blaise will give participants some solid tools and techniques in the art of drawing. He will show them how to produce an accurate measured drawing from life using the tried and tested methods of the last five centuries. He will also explain some simple compositional devices and their practical use in making that days's drawing, such as the initial placement of the figure. This workshop will be focussed on giving participants a working method in drawing which will add to their repertoire of tools and techniques.

The model will sustain the same pose for each day.

Each participant will receive a proportional divider and plumb line. Each participant will be expected to provide their own drawing or painting materials and paper. Large cheap sugar paper will be provided for rough work.

Blaise Smith has been living in the Kilkenny area for the last decade. He is a well known Figurative painter and is renowned as a draughtsman of great facility. Much of his work is of the vernacular Iandscape although he is also a prize winning portrait painter, exhibiting in the BP portrait award in 2003 and 2004 at the National Portrait Gallery in London and winning the RHA Kennedy award for portraiture in 2002, as well as 4 other awards in the RHA. He has been shortlisted for the Davy Portrait Award 2010 and a prizewinner in the Arnotts portrait Award.

€150 per person
March 29th -31st

Borris House is one of Irelands most beautiful and historic great houses located in the most spectacular scenery Ireland has to offer. The backdrop of the river Barrow which flows adjacent to the beautiful woodland and gardens of Borris House make Borris House the jewel in the crown of Carlow’s tourism destinations

The workshop will be held in the West Wing, a stand-alone double height stone building with its own entrances, heating, electricity and toilet facilities.

To book your place please contact Elinor on 0871409154 or elinor@borrishouse.com

Checkout www.borrishouse.com

---------------------------

JANUARY 2010

For the last few months I've been working on some experiments in paint and other media - the next show in the Molesworth has a working title of "24 Experiments in Painting". This gives me the chance to complete a variety of ideas that have cropped up over the last decade. Right now I'm working on some 3D Films and Anaglyph Paintings as well as a foray into egg tempera painting in the manner of the 16th century. Also about to attmept a sculpture. I'll post something as soon as they are ready. They may, of course, not work out....

At the same time I'm working on a couple of portrait commissions. To help fine tune that process I've been going to a life session every week and trying to improve my speed and accuracy when it comes to painting the Figure.

As anachronistic as it may seem, painting and drawing the nude is the most challenging exercise for any painter. I think this is because we, as humans, are extremely sensitive to human proportions. I mean, I could of course just draw a chair, but if it were wrong, well, then it may just BE that way. A drawing of a person must have a strong internal logic,so that the whole thing must be plausible.

Why nude? Really it makes little difference to me, except to compound the problem and the difficulty of the task.

You can see a time lapse of me drawing one of them in the link in the sidebar or click here.

DRAWINGS

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:32:54 +0100

PORTRAITS

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:29:41 +0100

STILL LIFE

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:28:39 +0100

WEAPONS

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:27:35 +0100

Browning Automatic Pistol

29.5 x 19.5 inches, oil on canvas, 2006

This was the first weapon I painted. More normally known as a BAP. When it was first shown to me the gunnery officer said: “don’t believe what you see in the movies. You’d be lucky to hit a barn door at thirty paces with one of these. All that stuff about people aiming…that doesn’t really work. You have to be point blank”.

In your hand it’s like a solid block of metal. Very dense. Its not often these days you come across something that feels like a black hole.

This particular weapon was bought by the Irish army just after the Second World War, probably as surplus the US no longer needed. They were decommissioned soon after I finished the painting – See USP handgun.

LANDSCAPES