This web site features the artwork of Chez Watts. It consists of a number of chronologically organised ‘rooms’ each featuring artwork of a few years. The majority of the work consists of nudes and portraits worked directly from live models, many sketchy and preparatory works, but some ‘finished’, both paintings and drawings, but there are also a few landscapes and still life paintings, and even some abstract and imaginative works.
Chez studied formally at Stourbridge Art College, The West of England College of Art, Bristol Polytechnic faculty of Art & Design and Bristol University Art Education Department. He also attended open life classes at the Royal West of England Academy building, and in the USA at the University of Southern Maine, Portland College of Art, The Carlo Pittore Academy of Fine Art and Bowdoin College, plus many local life drawing groups in Artist Studios, Community Centres and Church Halls. He also ran several life drawing groups in his own studios in Portland and Bristol.
The artwork on this site was mostly (>90%) done at publicly available untutored life drawing groups. Usually the models chose the poses themselves, though the organisers typically decided the pose lengths, sometimes through democratic votes amongst the attendees. In the USA the poses were usually shorter, though more dramatic or challenging, both to draw and for the models to hold. Quite often, in this scenario, the bulk of students complained the pose was ‘too hard’, and asked to move on to an easier pose. In this way I accumulated a lot of unfinished ‘promising starts’. In the UK the poses were often longer with a lot of attention to ensuring the model was comfortable which results in less dramatic poses which are less demanding for the models and are generally less interesting for the viewer. In these cases, where possible, I tried to find a less obvious angle on the pose which introduced more visual interest. Sometimes these sessions were quite crowded, with not much opportunity to change your viewing point once you were set up. In some venues you had to bring everything you intended to use and fetch water from a toilet on another floor, others provided easels, chairs and tables and props for the model, with examples everything between these two extremes. As I got older, my ability to visually focus on both the model and my artwork with the same glasses while standing at the easel (i.e. accommodation), diminished. I couldn’t use bifocals because you have to keep nodding your head up and down, not helpful for accurate draughting, and varifocals simple distorted the image proportions too much. The result was that I had to draw from closer to the model. In order to do this without blocking the view of the other students I always had to go to the least popular location in the room to draw from. This is why many of my pictures are strongly foreshortened images, because very few students choose to tackle these, so I could get closer to the model at these spots, without blocking anybodies view.
To navigate these rooms, select one from the list. In each room, if the ‘crossed arrows’ cursor (may be different on your browser) is active (over the picture) it will stay on screen. In this state you can ‘swipe’ between pictures (L, R, U, D) to see the others in the gallery. While the ‘arrow’ cursor is inactive (off the picture area) a slide show will step through the pictures in that ‘room’ at 6 second intervals. To return to the ‘room’ list home page, bop in ‘Chez Watts’ in the top left hand corner. You can e-mail me by bopping on the word ‘Contact’ on this page.
NEWS Spring 2023
I have recently done a ‘spring clean’ on this web site. It came to my notice that some user’s web browsers have a problem with rooms featuring large numbers of artworks (e.g.>300) so I have split up some of the largest rooms to avoid this, splitting them up into smaller rooms of works with a stronger time & place association to one another. These are mostly rooms of quick sketches. I have also extended some of the smaller and later rooms to include pictures done recently. Here and there I have pruned out some of the weaker images, sometimes replacing them with ones that didn’t make it onto the site before, probably just as weak but different, anyway.
The coronavirus lockdowns have meant that I have not been able to have live models in my studio for several years. Apparently, some people think you can practice life drawing by copying a static image from a computer screen - I cannot think of a greater folly, like thinking that you will learn as much about a foreign country by watching a travelogue on TV as by living there. To keep going during this time I have done a lot of experiments with traditional oil painting materials preparation, studying old books, making and testing painting media from old manuscripts. I have also looked out old drawings of mine that I think may have enough information to be able to make a painting from, some drawn as much as fifty years ago, though often I discover the information is too sparse, and my visual memory not good enough, to facilitate a good job.