Venus and the spark she lit.

The Venus de Milo statue. Graphite and Charcoal

This morning I pulled a card with Venus on it. It got me thinking about these ideas I've had for some paintings of women in their power. I have a painting with a woman whose head is thrown back, arm raised, just loving life. I called it Come Alive and it feels like ME - inside, at least who I strive to be. I've been wanting to do more paintings like it with other female figures and I felt that spark this morning to explore that. So I began by searching Venus Woman in google today. Of course this statue popped up. One of the lessons in the Art Mastery Class I've been taking has you drawing a statue very loose and gesturally - so I decided there was no better time than the present Venus was offering me. This drawing is the result. Its mostly graphite (including water soluble graphite) and a bit of charcoal. I'm pretty happy with the way she turned out. 

Afterwards I began researching more women figure images to design some paintings around. While doing that the idea of a series came up. I'm taking a year long class (for the second time - first time was 5 years ago) that is called Reclamation. Its about learning and reclaiming who you are. Each month is a different theme. So I thought it would cool to create a series with women centered paintings around each monthly theme. The challenge being finding that perfect image to represent each theme. Thus the researching. I'm also doing some writing to go with it. I'm pretty excited about it so far. We'll see how it goes over the coming months.