Altered Book with Gesture Drawings

At our Monday night figure drawing sessions we always start with a half dozen 2 minute warm-up poses before moving on to the evening's long pose. Over the years I have accumulated quite a stack of these gesture drawings which I tossed in a pile and never looked at until recently. When I finally did go through them, somewhat to my surprise I found that I actually liked a number of them. There was a certain charm in their energy and rawness that gets lost in my carefully rendered finished drawings.

So I decided to do something with them.

They were all pretty soft since they were done in pencil on newsprint. So I scanned them and did some Photoshop magic to punch them up. In so doing I discovered that the newsprint background began to look like yellowed old paper, a rather nifty effect which I then enhanced even further. I then printed them out on drawing paper. Since I've been somewhat obsessed lately with the book format as a vehicle for presenting art, I used these prints to make this altered book. It's something of an homage to one of my greatest pleasures - figure drawing.

I entered this piece in the Wisconsin Regional Artists Association State Exhibit at the Pyle Center at UW-Madison (702 Langdon St, Madison WI). It will be on display through September 21st. If you are not familiar with the Wisconsin Regional Art Program (WRAP) or the Wisconsin Regional Artists Assocaiation (WRAA), you can visit their website or click on my WRAA/WRAP tab to learn more. And if you've never seen one of their State Conference Exhibits at the Pyle Center, do check it out. There are over 100 pieces on display and the artwork is always terrific.