It occurred to me yesterday that I may not be able to keep going to figure drawing regularly once the weather breaks. I have lots of things to take care of and do out at the land and only a little bit of time off of work. Not decided at this point one way or the other but I would imagine once it is warmer and light later I am going to need to be out there too late to make it back to the city for class. Will have to see. Maybe I can schedule things to get out there early enough that I can make it back.
The figure drawing helps my brain, but so does being out in the woods.
Time will tell.
We had a new model last night. His name is Sam.
Putting them in order of drawing this time starting out with the short poses.
30 seconds30 secondsOne minuteOne minuteFive minutesTen MinutesTen MinutesFifteen minutesTen and Fifteen minutesTwenty Minutes. The model had taken a pose that I didn’t think they were going to be able to hold so I opted to focus on a part that wouldn’t move as much. I know you don’t normally see me focus so much time on a single body part other than a face. Thirty Five Minutes. Foreshortening is difficult. Twenty Minutes
Just got back from a week in the Carolinas visiting my family. Today is a really big day for me for reasons that I will get into in another post… but last night it was nice just to get back into my routine. A good night sleep well snuggled by kitties (who have forgiven me already and did not sleep on my head last night) followed by a day of getting cleaned up and back into routine.
So back to Figure Drawing last night. Model is Nia and I have drawn her at least once before. Good to see her again as well as all the lovely humans that I got to visit with last night.
As always images are in reverse order of how I drew them.
Nia is on Instagram as @babe_im_onfire
20 minutes – last post of the night and I never feel like I am working efficiently on the last one.35 minutes. Nia said on her Instagram today that she forgot to put a sheet down and got mild rug burn from this pose. 20 minutes. in going through the video I feel like I lost her nose at some point in the process… it was there and then it wasn’t. oops. 15 minutes10 minutes10 minutes each5 minutes each. one of the other artists remarked that they think 5 minutes is the sweet spot. Gestural and expressive without time to overwork. 1 minute poses30 second warm ups.
Timelapse on YouTube
Lots to do to get ready for today. Hopefully be able to update you soon!!!
This post was in my draft folder from last year. I have no idea why I never posted it. So here it is anyhow. wildly out of context and season – but whatever. you can’t fire me.
Here is the original post:
May 16th (the day after my last post) I started another chalk project in my driveway.
Shortly after I began I was joined by a young neighborhood artist named Leslie and her Mom, Ruth. They added nicely to my project and it was wonderful to have company.
I worked on mine a little more:
Then I packed it in for the night and came back and added more the next day.
Another amazing addition by Leslie:
collaborative additions by Leslie and her mom:
Back to prompts…
Virtual Figure Drawing with Mia:
I didn’t have much time but the rain had washed away the previous chalking and some sadness was expressed by a neighbor that it was nice out again and there was nothing out. Time for a quick Duckie.
Virtual Figure Drawing with Cecelia.
Started another chalk project. This one got a little bigger than I had initially intended.
By this time Leslie has moved into working in her own driveway and going bigger… the neighborhood is getting more colorful.
On May 21st I participated in the Record Breaking attempt for the World’s Largest Online Art Class with #DrawWithRob
He wildly surpassed the numbers needed. I don’t know if or when it becomes official but it was fun. I was given a heads up about this event from my niece. I called my daughter. So myself, my niece, my daughter and my Granddaughters all played along with Rob’s instruction.
Then back to work on the driveway some more….
Last class with Rob Liberace.
Another drawing. I really liked this one so it did make it to RedBubble.
Then I got REALLY distracted. I was painting the walls. There has been this one area that I always suspected had an area closed off behind it. While I was painting it occurred to me that if I was ever going to smash through that wall… I should do it then before I repainted everything and made it all nice.
That’s all I am going to tell you about that project for now. It is ongoing and if I get to do everything that I want to it is going to be a SUPER amazing thing. And if not, it will be a weird little storage area. Time will tell which one happens.
I am in (another ) group on Facebook that is doing weekly drawing prompts. This one was Octopus.
Valentine’s Day is a mixed bag. I have some happy thoughts about it but it is definitely an overly commercial date. There are things I would like to have been able to do. I would like to have some moments of feeling special or loved – but there are a lot of us that want for those things. I know that there is lots of love and support in my life even on the days where I am not feeling it or too stubborn to accept it.
So being able to go to figure drawing and laugh and visit with some good people made my day much better. In the shop sometimes we will talk about “Saturday Energy”. When we have gotten to the end of the week and everyone is just a bit punchy but also silly and having fun. Last night’s group had Saturday Energy and I very much appreciated it.
I was therefor talking and visiting during some of the time that I could have been drawing – but no matter what as always it is good practice and I am glad that I was able to go and grateful to have this space and be allowed to participate.
Very chaotic even for 30 second poses!Bonus 30 second pose (I thought we were starting the minute poses)One minute poses
These drawings were done at Flower City Figure Study. Model is Mia.
If you have been here before you know that I very much enjoy drawing Mia. She is also the one who hosts these Monday night get togethers.
I would like to be posting my drawings from Figure Drawing last night here today. I can’t because I didn’t go. I haven’t been feeling well. Mostly physically but some mentally. Could very well be tied into the not feeling well physically but it is hard to tell.
I feel disconnected from me. Like I don’t recognize me in the mirror anymore. I mean, I know I am getting older and there are changes that come from that. It is something slightly other than that. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
A good friend of mine has been talking about having come here from one of the other parallel Universes. He has a reason why that change was necessary. He still has a very strong sense of who he is but he said that in the cross over there has been some slight discrepancies between what he remembers and what the people here remember.
It’s not that.
It’s not the world that feels off. It’s me. I feel more like someone swapped me out for someone else who is almost but not quite me more than I feel the world has changed. Perhaps like I used to be tethered in some way to something that I am not anymore.
It’s confusing. It’s fuzzy. But is also holds promise. If I am not what (or who) I was – what am I to become?
Standing at the edge of something.
I did draw yesterday. Some of the stuff I am working on is secret. Some of it is for tattoos. And some of it is just because. Here is the just because stuff from the last few days.
Valentine’s Day is right around the corner….My redraw from Monsters.Go of this drawing by Jackson
and I got my first ever book credit for a headshot (insert confused smiling emoji here). I took a photo of Ed Ashton for his book cover and they gave me credit on the hardcover liner. That is super cool and I am really happy for Ed that his book is doing so well.
He and Jen dropped off a copy that Ed signed for me so this gets to be that random story that I get to tell later about how I knew them back when (laughing emoji should go here I think).
Here’s a good place for a plug! You should go buy a copy of Ed’s book. Be one of the people who can say that they read it before the movie came out. Edward Ashton – Mickey 7
Another redraw project. The original was sent to me by a friend that would like a more traditional tattoo version of the artwork but I wanted to play with it anyhow.
I’m not sure what the original intent was with the fish hook but I liked the imagery so I included it as well.
Thank you for being here for my rambling. Thank you for being supportive when I don’t quite know what is going on.
Be patient with one another and yourselves. This Universe is still really weird.
I was asked recently why I go to Figure Drawing. I don’t know if I have a really good answer. I think that initially I started going because it seemed like one of those art school things that people who went to art school complained about but you could see where it was beneficial. I was never able to go to art school but wanted to try to expose myself to as much of it as I could without being able to go.
When I started going to Steve Carpenter’s regularly I found much more that a regular practice. I found a community. I looked forward to going every week. There were people that I missed if they didn’t come regularly and I know Steve would actually call and check on people if they hadn’t been by in a while. I loved the energy in Steve’s studio and a whole lot of that can be directly attributed to Steve. He is still who I want to be when I grow up. He was always so inspired and excited about what he was making in the studio and incredibly supportive to everyone in his classes regardless of their skill level. He also had bad days. Which was inspiring. I would always try to sit close enough to Steve to watch him work and because of that I could also hear him when he made self commentary on what he was doing. It showed me that there is always room to grow and that no matter how amazing someone is there are times when they are disappointed with what they are making.
I miss going to Steve’s but some of the same people now show up at Flower City Figure Drawing. I hope that it becomes the same type of community and I hope some time Steve stops by to draw with us.
Bryn modeled for us last night and did a spectacular job. I look forward to working with her more in the future. Some of her short poses were breathtaking and if I had a bunch of time on my hands any one of them would have made a gorgeous painting. (They would have required reference photos, none of them would be feasible to hold for long so they are not very accurately depicted here).
Some people have asked about the times so I will try to include them going forward. The link to the video is below the photos.
The singular most popular thing on my blog is the money stamps. It doesn’t lead to any traffic to the rest of my art/life but there are still tons of other humans out there trying to figure out what the heck these things are.
This morning I realized that I had a bunch of 20s in a drawer that I had been gathering for when I could get around to photographing them. I would like to use that money for things so today is the day they got photographed!
I have a folder of unpublished ones somewhere else so I will try and find that and add it to the 20s.
Usually when I post these I post links to the older ones that I have posted here but I can’t figure out how that works anymore so you will have to google if you would like to see more.
To preemptively answer the questions again. No, I still have not figured out who does this or why. At this point I have pretty much given up thinking that I will figure it out. I just enjoy finding them and continue to wonder why so few people actually notice them.
Are you sick of these yet? I am going to keep photographing them and posting them when people send photos to me.
Other questions I have gotten on these.
I have been asked if the stamps make them more valuable. Definitely not. They are still only worth face value and the bank periodically will tell me that it is illegal to mark currency even though they continue to give me bills with stamps and have never refused a deposit that contained them.
Do I know who is doing this or what they mean. no. I mention that every time I post these (sometimes more than once) but no, I still have no idea who is doing this or why.
yes, I have been told that money exchangers in other countries with stamp the bills after they have verified that they are genuine so they don’t have to check them again but it still seems highly improbable to me that this many of the bills that wind up in my pocket have been through a foreign country. That may be the reason for some of them, but it doesn’t explain all of them.
Also these stamps do not indicate that the bills are registered with Where’s George. Those bills are very clearly marked and I have checked their database randomly to see if the bills that I find stamped are registered there and none of them every have been.
Other than that, all I can say is please keep using cash. Businesses get hit harder than you realize for credit card processing. It is a frustrating necessary business expense but we appreciate when we don’t have to do it.
thank you for visiting
and if you have bills you would like to send me – snap a photograph and send them to me at justteejay@gmail.com Please do not photo the entire bill as if I have to put them into photoshop it shuts down if it detects a bill.
——-
Update Feb 8th 2022
Found another one and had another one emailled to me.
H2 in circle on one dollar billW on $20 sent to me by Jim via email
I used to publish here much more regularly. I have gotten out of the habit. Would like to get back into it, but can’t make any promises. I have never really adjusted to the new publishing platform and it is far more cumbersome than it used to be (for me) to put stuff together.
Anyhow, last night I went to figure drawing. It’s been a couple weeks since I went. I wasn’t feeling well the one night and then last week we had a snow storm and it was cancelled.
I felt rusty. I am still glad I went. I am glad that Mia has given us a new option for Monday night figure drawing and I would like to support it as much as I can.
30 second posesOne minute posesMore one minute poses5 minute poses10 minute Not sure if this was 10 or 15 munjutesAlso unsure on the time on this oneBack to 10 minuteLast pose of the night. 10? 15?
I need to write down the schedule because they always follow the same time on the poses and I would be able to go back and figure out how long each one was. Some of these I upload to YouTube but they tend to delete the ones with men in them so I am not going to this week. If I do another one that I am happier with the drawings I will go back to it.
The past year has been hard on almost everyone in some way or another.
I actually think that I fared pretty well through the actual lockdown (well, the first one…. personally I’m not convinced that it isn’t going to happen again but that is off topic). Turns out that I am pretty good at isolating and keeping myself amused for extended periods of time.
In November we started with the “we are going to close everything down again when ______________happens”. Then those things happened. Then the rules got changed. Then there were new parameters. Then it was a different story. Then one of the shops had to close. Then we were allowed to reopen. There has been SO much back and forth with no real answers.
Supplies have gotten more and more difficult to obtain and more expensive when we can find them. How much inventory do you stock when you don’t know if you will be open next week? How do you schedule appointments or plan for anything when everything is up in the air.
Is a tattoo really that important right now?
Random clients started calling and being abusive that they couldn’t schedule an appointment in person or yell at us because they couldn’t get into the studio (because we were following the state guidelines for being open now). I started to cringe every time the phone rang. Actually being relieved when it was a robocall. (I do understand that these people were not necessarily angry with me personally…. just needed to be able to vent as they are going through their own stuff…. but day after day it did get old and started to be more and more difficult to brush off).
It started to weigh on me. A whole bunch of other things then piled on top of the stress that I was no longer coping with well.
Emotionally I fell apart. It happened at the same time that the world was preoccupied with some National Events. I didn’t feel like I could reach out to the people that would normally be my support network as they were otherwise occupied.
Then the lease came up for renewal on my space in Piano Works. The space I hopefully and expectantly moved into in the early part of 2020. A place to hang my art that I had to get out of Whitman Works when they closed. A space where I could not only show my work and participate in group events – but create in a community space with other artists. It was to be a bright beginning.
Alas, these plans (like so many others) were derailed by the arrival of covid. I could not in good conscious re-sign a lease on a place for another year that I had been in less than 5 times in the preceding year. I had to get everything out of the space and find a place to store it.
I freaked out more.
I didn’t want to look at this pile of art that I had put my heart and soul into. I didn’t want to watch my cats nibble on the corners of the art until they were no longer presentable. I wanted to do something but I didn’t know what.
I decided to start getting rid of it.
I briefly thought about burning all of it.
But I wasn’t quite that far gone as to think I would be happy about that later.
I started packing the work up. Putting notes on the back of them and leaving them out in public places. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing this at first. When I did tell someone they were very concerned. I told someone else. They were also concerned. There was a certain cathartic element to what I was doing, but I did have to admit that it was the artistic equivalent of cutting in some ways. I was being self destructive, but it was making me feel better. And unlike cutting I was so very very much hoping that someone else would get to be happy from what I was doing. I did promise that I would stop for the time being to examine my motives.
I had not heard from anyone that had found any of the art and I started to envision it having been thrown away or destroyed.
Then I got a note from Carrie.
She had found the Beatnik Kitty drawing.
She took the time to write me a really wonderful note. She appreciated the art.
Her note was so sweet and wonderful and exactly what I needed. I cried. I may be crying again writing about it now.
Thank you Carrie.
While I have stopped for the time being dropping the work off in the world until I better understand my motives…. You made things okay for me in a very dark time in a way that you will probably never really appreciate.
Thank you.
I am so glad that there are people like you in the world and I am so happy that one of my pieces found a home with you.
I continue to hope that there are other people out there that found the work and appreciated it but didn’t write notes. It’s okay because Carrie did.
Tomorrow is another day. Eventually covid will pass and the world will move on. Eventually the Sadness will be a memory again. But for today I have a reason to be grateful and a bit of my faith in humans has been restored.
I’ve been away from here. There is no way I can summarize. I would like to say that I will be back here regularly again… but honestly only time will tell.
I’ve been participating in Figure Drawing via Zoom.
Sunday January 10th, 2021 – Model’s name is Mia
Monday January 11th, 2021 – Model’s name is Mia
I consider this a step in the right direction and right now that has to be enough.
I am a female tattoo artist and shop owner. I believe in love and creation above fear and destruction. I am a passionate person and respect and admire that in others regardless of where their passion lies.
But at the end of the day, all I want to do is add a little beauty to the world and try to be a blessing in the lives of those around me.
No matter who you are or how you have arrived you are welcome here.
There is no rhyme or reason to the things that I post here - but they are here to share. I believe that all things happen for a reason and while things may not always go the way that I want them to... they do go the way that they are supposed to go.
I hope that rather you are here once or often that you find what you are looking for and that in all things you will find the love that you deserve.
Just TeeJay's Blog 