Derron Thweatt sits for a portrait

Eight drawings done this week end during the Life Drawing on Zoom session with Derron Thweatt modeling for the artsaveslives Group. Derron is always a compelling model and today we had the honor to do portraits of him for the last hour of the session. As always, thanks to Thomasina DeMaio for arranging it all, to Tom Schmidt for keeping time today and to Alan Beckstead & Margaret Stroud for keeping it yesterday, and above all to Derron for allowing us the pleasure of seeing him.

Derron Thweatt at the End of February

 

At the end of last month I made these watercolor & pencil drawings of Derron Thweatt during the two sessions he posed for the artsaveslives Group organized by Thomasina DeMaio. I believe I'm beginning to achieve the quality of likeness I have hoped for when drawing him. Thanks.

 

These four drawings immediately above are from 4 minute poses that we did to warm up at the start of the sessions, two sheets from each day, three poses per page.

 

Oliver & Rita in the Trap

Oliver Reed would have turned 83 today if he had lived to see it. The Trap (Sidney Hayers, 1966) is not a great film, but Oliver Reed & Rita Tushingham worked beautifully together in it. It's well worth seeing for them, both oddly featured and altogether lovely.

The Interruption of Dreams, volume 2, Chapter 2,

Sunday in New York

Solveig is seated in the small circular cafe with a view of the skating rink at Rockefeller Center.  Seated on each side of her are her pal, Eszter, and Jane Fonda.  I am also seated on the other side of Jane, but noone is aware of my being there.  Solveig  and Eszter are nearly thirty years younger than Jane.  The three women are discussing motherhood and how they were initiated into sex too early, comparing their experiences growing up in famous theatrical families.

Solveig tells Jane that her older son, Orlando, dismisses her as a superliberal Leftist, a contemporary Hanoi Jane.  Eszter tells how these creepy old actors in her father’s company would hit on her when she was an adolescent.  Jane says it explains a lot.  It was all very much of its time.

Solveig explains that her mind is on her first lover who just died the other day.  He was twenty years her senior.  Their affair didn’t last beyond the summer.  He had to return to Paris.  Jane understands.  Her first husband was a French filmmaker; not very talented, though.  Fortunately, they only had one child together.  As the women discuss their various early relationships, I am literally reduced to a fly on the edge of the fine linen table cloth.  Jane  notes that she started out a few years later than Solveig and Eszter.  James Franciscus  was her first and only three years older than her.  The three women wonder why it was that Harvey Weinstein so often went after the daughters of his old friends in the business.  Uncle Harvey nearly got his nose busted by Brad Pitt.  Eszter tries to shoo me away with a swipe of her hand. Jane recalls all the fun she and Rod Taylor had filming in this cafe almost sixty years ago.  She left him with some fond memories, but for her it was just another fling.

 

 

Martirio de San Felipe, José de Ribera

1639. Óleo sobre lienzo, 234 x 234 cm.

Le pedí a mi amigo que replicara la pose del santo mártir Felipe, pero no lo hizo. Tal vez lo haría parecer demasiado vulnerable.

Three Birthday Portraits

 January 15th Pati Hernandez (62nd)

& Vince Aletti (76th)

January 22nd Thomasina DeMaio (70th)

The Interruption of Dreams, volume 2

Chapter 1,  L'Année dernière à Marienbad

 

The setting of this morning’s dream was the drawing room of a gentlemen’s club, though on waking I realized it was actually the game room of the chateau in Resnais’ masterpiece, perhaps Schloss Nymphenburg in Bavaria.  I was playing cards with two other gentlemen and doing rather well.  The game was Black Jack or Twenty one.  

 

For some reason unknown to me, a man at another table did all he could do to distract me, cracking jokes and making ugly faces.  When I could take no more of his attempts to interrupt me, I looked directly at this joker and clearly but silently mouthed the words go fuck yourself.  Whereupon he brought forth his smartphone from the inside pocket of his Armani tuxedo and called Security, or possibly the Police, in order to have me removed from this exclusive club. 

 

It was then I realized that his antipathy stemmed from my attachment to a young man whose name he could either not remember or, when he could recall it, he mispronounced (deliberately or not I could not say).  Something I was unable to fully remember had occurred a year or so before between this young man and myself that caused us to no longer see each other, which filled me with grief for many months following our separation.  Before the authorities could have me removed I woke, removing myself.