Visiting Artist: David Jon Kassan

These past few months I have been lucky to attend a few really great artist demos. One of them was David Kassan who came to do a workshop at the Scottsdale Artist’s School. Besides his private workshop, he did a public painting demo and then graciously came to ASU and did a drawing demo. It was fun to see such an accomplished artist and he was very kind and down to earth.

I didn’t take any notes through the demo so I guess I can only give a few observations. If you really want to know about Kassan’s painting and drawing process, I know that he has a drawing DVD for sale and I think he just wrapped up filming his painting DVD. I know I stated this in a previous post (and I will probably be stating it in nearly every post after), but if you are a student and have access to interlibrary loan through your college, then you can probably check out his drawing DVD from anywhere in the country. However the painting one won’t be available for a while though, I’m sure.

So for anyone who doesn’t know, Kassan paints portraits of people- rather large ones that are highly detailed. Two examples of his work:

For his demo he painted alla prima, which isn’t really what he is known for and I’m sure he usually only does it for demos. He uses Vasari oil paint for some of his color choices and I’m pretty sure he uses Rosemary and Co. brushes but judging by the pictures I have it looks like he uses all kinds. Those seem to be the popular choice for brushes these days. One day if I have enough money I might be tempted to try them. If you do a search, you can find the entire list of materials to buy for one of his workshops. Anyway, Kassan gets rather close to his models when he paints and draws them but then he also uses close distance binoculars to view small angles and colors. He really enjoys talking while he paints as well- something that I don’t think I could do myself. We noticed that he had some premixed colors on his palette that he uses instead of white- so it prevents him from going too light of a value in the skin. He keeps his palette aligned vertically which I found extremely different because you would think that the medium would drip down off the side, but apparently he uses only a small amount so that it usually doesn’t. After Kassan finished the portrait, he signed it and people were able to bid on it. I forget how much it went for- maybe around 5 or 600.

About to start on the portrait and figuring out placement.

Although several of those colors may look like white, they aren't.

Beer, water and brushes! All he needs, I guess.

Notice the duct-taped mahlstick.

David apparently thought his painting looked better on the big screen than in real life!

At the end he took things a bit too far...

Leaving the signature and it's ready for auction!

The completed portrait

On to Portrait drawing. Kassan set himself up in an old chair in our classroom and made himself right at home for the drawing demo. He had the model look down which I have since noticed seems to be his choice of pose at times. I’m not sure exactly why he likes to pose the model like that, but I’ve seen him do it on several pieces. Anyway, he uses pan pastel black for the initial block-in and generals charcoal pencils and wipes at his drawing frequently (something which we are told not to do at our school but then I won’t even go into that, haha!). He uses a pencil sharpener from China or Korea that is meant for children to use but it suits his needs. He found it at his local dollar store in Brooklyn but I’m sure you can find them online. I found a bunch just by using google’s image search. I also have a pencil sharpener kind of like his, but I’m not sure if it’s any better even though it looks nicer.

It was great watching his drawing process because I can relate more to it than I can painting. While I’ve been painting a lot lately, I’ve always been attracted to drawing first and foremost, and because I’m so familiar with it, I can easily follow all of his steps and understand what he is doing. The portrait drawing demo was very last minute and it was all thanks to a friend of mine that Kassan came and it was great to see that there was a huge turnout from the students. We weren’t sure if anyone was going to show up at first because not a lot of the kids at my school are familiar with his work.

While several of my friends did end up going to dinner with Kassan afterwards, I opted out because I was tired after many a long school day. But it was great to see & meet him and I enjoyed watching his process!

David Kassan’s Website

Setting up and making do with what little we have in the studio.

Starting out blocking in the shadow shapes with Panpastel.

The best shot I could get of the final picture.

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.