Sunday, 20-Dec-15 20:04:46 CET

Eva 20 December 2015

It is Sunday 20 December 2015 and it is time for the last model session at De Stoker of 2015. Today the trains are cooperating. I am really tired though because it has been late nights lately. No I have not started partying myself but others have and I somehow have to fulfill my obligations for bringing them back home. Cannot wait until they can do it all by themselves.

I finished my series of 4 panels I had loaded in Jens Wet Panel Box so it was about time to load 4 new fresh panels. At first when I created the box the panels fit nicely. Later they started to be snug fit. Love that expression. So after some time it went from snug fit to right out impossible. When let the hardware store cut the boards they miss a millimeter sometimes but it just became worse and worse. Today I breached up my box open and displaced one side so that my panels can slide in without any force. This feels great!

Today it is time to paint a female model again. Her name was Eva. It was a really beautiful model. She had long dark blond hair and an exquisite figure. She had a really nice personality as well and she came on time. I wonder do you need any more qualifications to be a top model? To sit still without falling asleep is perhaps another requirement but she could do that too. After each break she could pick up her pose where she left it so that was fabulous.

I started by using a whole 30 minutes to draw her with charcoal. She was half lying on the coach with light from right side, from my perspective, but the big warm lamp was turned on as well. This way she got a warm skin tone. She had been sun bathing lately because I could see her bra lines as well but I forgot to ask her if she had been on holidays lately.

The painters where Luc, Dick and Saskia. There were two other painters I have seen before having a studio in Vianen, Utrecht but I don’t know their names. Finally, there was another painter, a lady, I have only seen two times before of which I also don’t know her name. There was also Hick the cat, my new friend at De Stoker but he was not allowed in today. Too bad.

At De Stoker in the studio upstairs Bastian celebrated his birthday. They sang the Happy Birthday song for him. Already earlier I told about that is a rather thin floor so downstairs we could clearly hear all words of the birthday song. Then Luc reminded us all of that Saskia recently celebrated her birthday too so downstairs we also sang the birthday song for Saskia. This way it became a little battling between upstairs and downstairs at De Stoker. Downstairs we were clearly better at singing.

The snacks at the birthday party was also the reason Hick was not allowed in.

Since I got some criticism of too big heads lately I carefully measured the head against the whole body. I think I got it right this time. I used several cross reference measurements. The compared her lower part of with her upper part so that both were in the correct scale with each other. To do this I hold up a stretched arm with a pencil or paintbrush and then I put my thumb at one landmark of the model. Then I move the pencil to compare that previous distance with another part of the model. I often used for example her head but also the legs. Comparing the length of the foot with the face. The distance from her toe to her hand and the distance from her hand to her right shoulder. Well her right shoulder from my perspective.

We had to finish the painting in one session because this was the final of this year’s live model sessions at de Stoker. Like the previous three or four paintings I tried to use the same size paintbrush for all parts of the painting including her face. This is because then there is a less risk of that the face is painted with a different style. I think this is actually working. I start to understand the many painters on YouTube using thin little paint brushes. For example, Lena Danya. That is so that they when it comes to tiny details can work on these details and the rest of the painting is painted in the same style. When doing it the other way around you can make the broad big strokes and then when arriving to the small details you have a challenge. I would really not have any patients at all for a huge background with a small tiny brush.

I cheat a little by using a bigger brush for the background. For the rest of the work I use a brush of size 5. This needs to be seen in relation to the surface of 30 by 40 cm. If I was painting a one by one meter, then a brush of size 5 would be small. I could also paint the background with a brush 5 by I don’t have that time so I use a brush number 20. That is almost 4/5 of an inch wide. Actually I don’t know what the paintbrush sizes represents.

The model was sitting on a white blanket on the coach and behind the coach she had a dark blue wall. It gave the painting much of contrast. It was a really enjoyable session.

Dick was humming along the music on the computer. He got a deep voice. I don’t know if he knows that he is humming all the time. Actually he got a pleasant deep voice and he is not humming out of tune so I could live with it. If he was humming dissonant then I had asked him to stop.

After the painting session had ended there was an end-of-year “borrel”. It is called like that in the Netherlands. A little small party for all painters. The model also stayed. There came also other painters to the borrel-party: Jochem and Lotte joined the party and Dirk.

At some point I got the chance to ask the model a question I have been wondering a lot about “What is the motivation for becoming a nude life painting model?”. I cannot say that I got a really good answer to my question from the model. Dick thought it was a question a painter should never ask a model. I wonder why? Jochem had a theory that there has to be something with exhibitionism involved. Then someone said that perhaps some models like to hang around with artists. That must be a really selfish idea, I don’t think that is likely reason.

When I left the party it was dark outside. I took the train home and it went on time and arrived on time. It had been a nice finale of the painting year.