Currently on the Easel

Right now I'm trying to finish this master copy, a portrait by John Singer Sargent. I'll post all the process photos I've been taking later. But for now it's crunch time and I have to focus on finishing all of my final assignments!

On the drawing board tonight!

An assignment for my watercolor class. Sorry for the bad picture quality. The pencil lines are always a little difficult to pick up with the camera. It is a "left brain/right brain" project. I have the triangle which is the scientific symbol for change, as well as a cloth wrapped up in an infinity symbol. But more details are to come, as well as some xerox transferring! So far I've done about 2 hours worth of work on the fabric and some of the body. It's all on hot press 300 pound arches watercolor.

Currently On the Drawing Table...

I did this very simple charcoal portrait in my lifedrawing class, but decided I could develop it into something further even though I didn't have a model on hand. So now I'm adding geometric elements and turning it into something I never really would have expected. I'll post another picture when I'm done with it.

Preparations

Tomorrow I'll be doing some plein air painting with my class. I'm taking James Gurney's advice and preparing some sky panels ahead of time. It's my first time using cobalt drier, so I hope they come out okay! I actually had some problems creating a good sky gradient, so next time I should probably try a larger brush than about 3/4 in so it's not so "stripey."

Alla Prima Showdown!

At the beginning of the month, the painting and drawing club at my school had their annual “Alla Prima Showdown.” Basically it’s a contest that involves a large group of people each completing a painting in 15 minutes and then afterwards being judged by our professors. There are about 4 rounds, and the winner receives a gift card to the local art store. I decided to attend although I’ve never painted alla prima before. It was lots of fun and I think I must have used about 25 dollars worth of paint just smacking it down before the time was up!

The first two rounds were still life subjects and I made it through, but the third round was a model. Although I do plenty of life drawing, I’ve never painted a live model before and honestly it looked terrible because I can’t paint decent skin yet! So I knew that I was out at that point and sure enough I was cut. The last round involved painting “nothing” which true to the word was literally an empty space. So people just made up whatever they wanted and put it down on their canvas. The judges weren’t exactly making their decisions on skill, to be fair they wanted everyone to have a shot, so they kind of made the rules up as they went along and it was hard to tell exactly what they wanted to see.

Round one was a black and white theme. You probably can't even tell whats there, but its a striped piece of fabric, silver pitcher, stuffed polar bear and a plaster cast. Various people in the background and the winner's robes.

A very colorful still life this time with a stuffed orange teddy bear, fruit and jars of paint.

I'm not posting my wretched nude, but even though I was out, I still painted this abstract for the last round where we had to paint "nothing."

But overall I had a wonderful time eating pizza, painting, talking to others and I’m glad I went. For making it as far as I did, I got a free brush so I didn’t come home empty handed. =) Two girls won and they got to have their names engraved on a silver cheese platter in the shape of a palette (heheh). Well if they have it again next year then I still have another shot to win!

We used canvas pads which are quite new to me. I really kind of like them and since I don’t plan on keeping my paintings, I think I’ll probably cut them up into smaller sizes and use them for studies.

Notes from a Workshop!

This past semester, we were lucky to have a very popular artist, Vincent Desiderio come and speak at our school and do a few workshops. I attended the lecture which was very insightful, but what I found to be even more informative was the information that I was able to glean from attending one of the workshops.

My experience in this workshop was a lot like this blog post by Joshua Flint, as well as this one by Mike Manley.

Some of Vincent's work:

I sat in and listened for a while and watched the students as he directed them. In the first workshop he had them draw a quick gesture of a model on paper and then shellac over it. This session they were starting to figure paint in oils. He would demonstrate how colors were affected by each other and the differences between warm and cool ones. I’m very new to oil painting, so I tried to follow along as best as I could and write some quick notes:

1. Have on your palette warm versions of cool colors and the other way around. There are warm and cool reds, greens and blacks.

2. Understand how broken color works. Take yellow and purple. When you put them together it makes them less garish. Different reds are broken with different kinds of greens. Burnt umber mixed with white can look like another color next to yellow.

3. Let shadow model the form.

4. Always buy good quality paint! One of the students that he was helping had bought some very cheap paint. It may have been Winton, I don’t really remember…but he immediately told her to get better paint in front of the whole class. I’m sure she was a little embarrassed that day. As I’ve started to paint, I really recognize the difference between the cheap paint and the good stuff after my painting is dry. It’s better to spend the extra money, and oils go far and last a long time. He also told everyone to not be afraid to harm their brushes and “scumble” with them. Some students expressed concern about them not being cheap but he didn’t really seem to think they were that expensive.

5. When direct painting, use a full range of color.

6. Use chromatic opposition. Remember contrast.

7. He seemed to like the “fruit salad” idea, although I’ve read that it’s not a good thing. I guess everyone is different.

8. Let color create an organic shape and modify the edges.

9. Your paint should be bone dry. If you must thin, use turp.

10. Become like a sculptor, lay the paint on.

11. Work something until an illusion comes into place. Then once you find it, you can move forward.

12. Light is the tool for creating roundness.

13. Use the other end of the brush to scratch with or use a harder bristle.

14. If you want to create something, you must try to do it with your own technique. But you must keep your principles behind it. Then, you will be a part of history. (This piece of advice was my favorite )

15. Shadows are mirrors! Not only will shadows be cool, but remember that there is a cast shadow color.

Back to Basics - Sketch Dump 3

One interesting way to practice drawing is to take an object and draw it in outline, draw it again in mass and then combine mass and line in the last one. My drawings below aren't in any particular order, but each subject is drawn three times. I would draw the outline, then take the charcoal and put it on its side and go to town on the paper- making really dark marks and trying to flesh out the shape and negative space around the object without making any hard lines. For the last drawing, you combine the two and give the line gesture some shading.

Back to Basics - Sketch Dump 2

Here is another exercise where we practiced ellipses. That strange unicorn horn shaped thing was some sort of strange ceramic object. As you can see on the right hand picture I started to use shading with the conté crayon turned on its side. Don't be afraid to sharpen your conté or charcoal stick to a long tapered point or use the side of it. Even try breaking it and a square edge! It becomes fun to play with and experiment with.

In this picture we practiced drawing a bunch of cubes with 2 point perspective. I think that my teacher only may have thought that one of these was successful at proper perspective. I think I tended to make my squares look like rectangles or give them a 3 point perspective instead of 2. I also tend to exaggerate how tall the top square plane is. I would make the top of the cube longer, as if I were looking down upon it from a higher elevation. But I think doing that is pretty normal for beginners, so don't be surprised if it frustrates you!

Back to Basics - Sketch Dump

Last semester I had to take a basic level art class- Drawing 111, which is probably the most elementary drawing class you can take in college. Even though I've been drawing for a long time, there was no way around it since I didn't have the requirement filled. It was a good class and as long as I was drawing something, I didn't really care what it was. I actually don't think I've ever sat down and just drawn a simple still life with basic shapes and so it was surprisingly refreshing to draw really simple things and not worry about perfection.

Anyway, I'm going to post my drawings in here so you can get an example of beginner studies that one would expect from an elementary drawing class. There will be line gestures, shade and light studies, contour, etc. These are the kinds of basic studies that any beginner should start out with. Sure they can be really boring, but when you learn to draw you have to draw stuff you don't always enjoy.

These are all in conté or charcoal on 18 x 24 rough newsprint.

Here above we have some quick gestures of a tricycle and some still life. The one on the bottom right was some kind of attempt at mass gesture. These were all done very quickly. The goal when doing a gesture is not to be perfectly accurate. You just want to get the general outline and form of the object.

In the middle picture at the top is a simple line drawing, and at the bottom you can see that we started to practice elipses, which can be more difficult than you would think to get right.

Above are still lives where we used scribble gesture, and simple line. I think we had about 10 minutes to do each of these. When you do a gesture, try to get everything you see on to the page as quickly as possible, don't worry about fine details. As a beginner, you may have some trouble getting everything centered on the page. You will get better with practice.