Goodbye Anthea......

Thing thing that made me sad about watching this episode is that I didn't get to be part of it.  The body, the human form and movement are my strongest skills.  I absolutely adore looking and drawing the human body.  They're a set of challenges I think I would have done well at.  If only Blenheim Palace had come afterwards, not before I'd had a chance to prove myself more..........

Tough challenges though.  The human body is fabulous - all curves and colours where sometimes you don't expect them.  Very classical poses, with the spear and loin cloth.  It would have been great to get my teeth into drawing those lovely muscle shapes, the curved back, shapely calves, sinewy veins, making sure the head was in proportion, getting the foreshortening on the arm holding the spear correct.  A 2/3rds pose allowing a little zooming in to focus on skin colour would have been great.    

I thought they all did pretty well, especially as I know some of they guys struggle with figures.  I love the fact that Amy chose inks to use and Anne used watercolour, layering her colours up.  I liked Claire's painting, even though her model did end up with one very large leg (how did that get past you, Claire?).  And.... I just noticed that Claire paints left handed - that might be the reason why she makes those lovely indiosyncratic marks.  I liked Anthea's too, even though the head was a bit big.  I thought it looked very tribal.

The human form in movement - that's really challenging.  Exciting though!  With this kind of drawing you need to sit back and observe first before starting to put anything down on paper.  Look for the rythmn, look for the repetition and decide how you're going to capture it on paper.  Not easy to do.  Definitely not easy to do when you're being interviewed and have to stop what you're doing to talk to a presenter (which also breaks your concentration).  It would have been nice to see Lachlan sketching a moving person in his 'how to' section, rather than just a balloon though......  

I used to do fashion illustration classes a few years ago, where the models sometimes moved, or at least, only held a pose for a few seconds before changing again.  I loved it.  It's amazing what beautiful (and accurate) lines you can capture on paper when you're really concentrating.  Personally, I always found I needed a warm up, something you don't get time to do on the BPC. I've also sketched models coming down the catwalk.  There you really do have to co-ordinate your hand and eye quickly, capturing the look and detail of the garment as accurately as you can so you can convey it to the head of your design team afterwards.I thought they all did well considering the circumstances and I have to say I thought Anthea's was really very nice, even though it did get pretty knocked by the judges.  I certainly didn't think it was worse than anyone elses.

The flamenco challenge - wow,  a difficult one.  To capture the movement, the sexiness, get the proprotions right, the colour, convey the feeling......  I thought it was very brave of Amy to start her work again with only a short while to go and it definitely looked better the 2nd time around with some great twisting movements and I love the way she put her colour down in heavy strokes.  I thought Paul's worked really well as it had a very sensual feel to it, whereas Claire's had lots of energy. I think keeping  things like facial details to a minimum so you focus on what the body is doing would have been really important.  Perhaps that was part of Anthea's downfall on that challenge - the details in the faces were distracting.  I loved the intense colours of Richard's which I think echos the way he paints and I thought Anne's figure placements.

They all worked really hard and it was so sad to see Anthea go (although I already knew she had come out  in that round).  It was strange watching them on tv and wondering what it would have been like to be part of it, sweating over the challenges, getting nervous, getting bored in the long breaks between filming and larking about, eating too many sugary snacks......  

I had been out myself for a week by then and missed them all so so badly.