Bit saccarine, pleased with the composition and the dressing gown. It was a lovely pose from Laura. Painted at the Saturday long pose at Draw, 10x12'' on oil primed board, with a palette of Cadmium Red, Naples Yellow, Burnt Siena, Ultramarine Blue, Zinc White and a touch of refined linseed oil. 

[Monday]

The week of the 14th April was my first back after being away. Monday night’s Egon Schiele themed Drawing Circus proved an unmitigated success, seamlessly planned by Shelley Morrow and attended in force by the glitterati of the Brighton life drawing circuit (Paul Cemmick, Mark Harrison, Geo Parkin etc, even Graham Hanney made it along). The nights drawing was preceded by a surprise interview with the charming Boogaloo Stu in the insalubrious surroundings of the Juice FM headquarters on North Road; we talked Speiegeltent Drawing Circus on air and off air reflected on the compromises that accompany the commercial success of the Proud Ballroom.

[Thursday]

Monday’s literal Circus was a prelude to a metaphorical three-ringer of a Thursday. An 8am life drawing gig for Tom & Nic’s  Heart FM breakfast show (life drawing on the radio?!) provided a lively opening act.  The big cats came next: my long time student Simon continued his current cat obsession in our morning 1:1 drawing class, breaking out the oil pastels for the first time in months. 

The afternoon took on a more serious tone in a two hour meeting with between the tenants of New England House and Nick Hibberd, head of Brighton & Hove City Regeneration, where he received an overdue grilling on the council’s ill-conceived plans to redevelop our beloved studio complex. 

I had time to play ring master (holding an off-program life drawing class in the main studio for my Creative Future students) before running away to The Old Market to celebrate the third birthday of my favorite Brighton theatre with an ambassadorial reception of Brighton arty-types. 

Finally the acrobats: courtesy of TOM we all reveled in an hour of gravitationally inverted delight watching a performance of ‘Leo’ which left me with a smile, distorted proprioception and an unrelated craving for sweet potato chips. 

[Pictures from the week]

Compressed charcoal drawings... Johanna 15 mins / Johanna 1 min / Laura Kate O'rourke 3 min 
Classes... Portrait class at Cass art / Simon's class at Draw / Drawing Circus at The Old Market

Littering the internet
Ive never been very good at maintaining personal blogs. At 20 I set up a (quickly defunct) Blogger account and I've had a long running, poorly maintained Tumblr blog since then, which I am retiring in favour of writing via my own website (i.e here). Im approaching this blog with the aim of keeping the website fresh, as updates to the core content happen quarterly at best. Hopefully it will be successful as a complimentary addition to the site's content; if this blog post is still the only one up here in August then you'll know I've failed. 

By way of introduction
Have a look at home page of this site for a little bit of biography. I spend most of my time teaching drawing, writing about drawing and drawing, so expect lots of that in future posts. I run the small, independent drawing school Draw in Brighton, co-direct the Drawing Circus and I paint, mostly in oils. 

What you'll see on here
I'll aim to keep the posts regular and informative, with a mixture of reviews (of exhibitions, drawing books and art materials), posts about my own artwork, teaching drawing and a few thoughts on drawing theory. I'll save flagrant self promotion for Twitter and Facebook. 

Thanks for reading,
Jake