Day 3: Poster Study

Today, we started on poster studies...

Day 1: 3-hour monochrome/grisaille study

This is the first painting at Studio Escalier's Alla Prima Portrait workshop:

It is the closest to "true grisaille" that I have done - at least in a long time. ("True grisaille," I guess, would be only black & white paint; this is Williamsburg raw umber + titanium white. The raw umber that I normally use - Old Holland raw umber - is much closer to a yellow ochre - much more golden - than this raw umber. I used this colour 100% due to the fact that I found a partially used tube in the studio and thought I could get a wider range of values out of it than the Old Holland raw umber. Turns out, Tim used Williamsburg raw umber for his demo, so it was the same stuff, but really, you could use any raw umber, or black, or theoretically any other colour. Although, then it would be "monochrome" and arguably not "true grisaille." Which of course means absolutely nothing.)

"Alla prima" means "all in one go": you've got your 3 hours and that's it! There's no going back. So, yes, it's hard. We talked about it: it's scary, it's difficult. We are under pressure. We're not sure we can do it. We're walking a tightrope. As Tim mentioned, painting alla prima sums up everything that you have learned: you have no chance to go back and fix anything. The goal, as Jacques-Louis David said, is to "paint true and just the first go-round." (Let's call that a paraphrase.)

At the end of the 3 hours, I pretty much felt like I'm never going to get this. I have SUCH a hard time rounding form (i.e., painting forms with a feeling of depth, instead of flatness). This is the hardest part of painting, and pretty much what I come to Studio Escalier to learn, cuz nowhere else I've been has talked about the same things.

Anyway, enough blogging: I am off to do another monochrome study. I suppose I'll do a self portrait, since I don't have another model, don't want to paint from a photo, and don't have any still life objects that I want to paint at the moment.

Here I go!

(Oh, by the way, the model's name is Olivia, and the class today was taught by Krista Schoening.)

So...I did a second, "true" grisaille painting today, after class:


It's entitled Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Soviet Sympathizer. It took about 2 hours, and I fell asleep partway through.

The main techncial differences between this one and the previous one are:

• It is true grisaille: only black and white paint.



• It's a lot harder to look askance at yourself while you're painting yourself than it is to look at a model with all of your eyes.



• It's a lot smaller (roughly half the size), and as I mentioned, I only spent about 2 hours of painting time on it.



• I used Cremnitz (lead) white, not titanium white, so it's entirely non-edible.

Portrait Practice at Work

I worked on these portraits over a period of time, roughly starting around the time of the portrait workshop.

The first drawing I did on this page is the larger one of the Lebanese woman, on the left. (I took her photo in maybe 1990, and always liked the image, even though the photo is rather flat. She has beautiful henna designs on her hands, which of course I didn't draw.)

For this drawing, I was interested in starting from a single detail and working out from there, kind of like mapping your neighborhood, then working outward to map your city, then your state (or 'province' for us Canadians), then finally your country. (Because no matter what they tell you, it IS your country!) This is opposite to my usual working method of mapping out the country with all the provincial/municipal divisions, then "colouring them in." It's not that I dislike that method, but I was intrigued by this method, and wanted to give it a shot. I know that people work this way (Richard Schmidt for one), and just wanted to give it a shot myself.

It seems to me that it is slightly more demanding, as all of your tiny measurements have resonance in the larger structure, whereas, if you start large and work down to the smaller details, the worst you can do is misplace an eye (as opposed to, for example, distorting her cheek, like I did).

Another effect that I tried was to make the features darker and clearer and leave the rest slightly more hazy. Unfortunately, I didn't think of doing this until well into the drawing, so I kind of attempted to retroactively fit the effect into the drawing, with limited success.

I was pleased with the feel of the flesh, and the rendering of the features in general. (The eye is slightly misplaced, the mouth was too large, though I may have fixed that...and the hands are way too large. And the cheek too far out.) Despite its faults, though, I actually like the effect. I like the shapes of the fingers (even if they're a little large), and I'm pleased with the contour of the cheek. The reason I didn't do a more finished piece is that the hand was too far gone, and I just plain didn't feel like working on her head covering.

Next up was the portrait of the woman on the right, drawn from a photo of a portrait bust in the Louvre.

I've Just Seen a Face

This is my second attempt to "do one thing, then move on," although to be honest, it sort of digressed from that purpose into "getting an entire face done colourfully" - which is a legitimate goal in itself. It's just good to try to do ONE thing when painting, instead of change your mind halfway through. That said, I'm not at all displeased with the result:

The best thing about this painting, in my opinion, is the colorfulness of it: I tend to use Earth colours and wind up with muddy, slightly monochrome paintings. In this one, I ratcheted up the chroma and got a slightly more colourful result than usual.

The worst thing about this painting, at least in terms of the actual painting process, was that I started out wayyyy too light in the darks, without realizing it, and had to totally go through the shadow section and reinforce the entire area. That sucked, since I was well on my way into the portrait before I realized that my shadows were too weak to support the lights. It also made the face look as though it were pivoting around the nose and kind of folding in onto itself. (It still has that effect, slightly.) I needed to bulk up the area slightly below and to the right of the nose. Oh yeah: some of the reflected light in that are was ridiculously too light (a leftover of my ridiculously too light shadows), which, come to think of it, the "pillar of the mouth" on the lower-right-side of the lips still seems a little too bright. (I just learned "pillar of the mouth" in the Eliot Goldfinger book; if you paint the figure and don't have that book, drop what you are doing and run like hell to Amazon.com and order it right now!) I'm planning on being buried with my copy when I die, so, sorry.

This painting, it turned out, was the last of the portraits I did before the Alla Prima Portrait Painting workshop at Studio Escalier. I had potentially the most stressful three weeks of my life just before leaving: a HUGE project at work was just ending (the original due date came and went, and we agreed on a deadline a week later, which seemed more to prolong the pain instead of actually assuage it), a huge freelance project loomed (I wanted to finish before leaving for France; I didn't, exactly), the "Arts & Crafts Room Nazi" in my condo unit more or less outlawed oil painting in the communal art room, and I was summoned before the condo Board to explain my reaction to that pronouncement (let's not get into that), I basically decided to move out of the condo unit in response.

So, far from getting dozens of paintings accomplished, as I'd somehow naively thought I could, I got more like half a dozen done.

Do One Thing, Then Move On

After painting several oil portrait sketches in 3 hours and always coming out with something around 70% finished, I decided on a different tack: I would attempt to paint ONE THING completely before moving on. I didn't do a block-in of the entire face: I blocked in the nose, painted the nose, then moved on.

This was the result:

I was quite happy with this painting, actually, since it represented the most "finished" thing I've done in a long time. Even though the entire portrait isn't finished, what I did work on is basically finished. OK...so I have a finished nose! Well, that's OK. I have enough unfinished everything paintings at home that it is nice to have something a little different. Also, it was interesting to start a painting from one small detail and expand from there, as opposed to blocking in the entire head (or even figure), then "fill in" the contour.

Actually, while I was painting this, I felt incredibly confident: it felt as though every stroke was the right one, and I could do no wrong. (Except, for some reason, the far cheek. I had a heck of a time pitching the angle correctly, although I think it ended up pretty good. Actually, I learned from that: the contour can be left as kind of a "detail" - you don't necessarily need to draw the contour 100% accurately at first. Sometimes, these things just resolve themselves out of everything else that you paint!)

My painting buddy, Isabelle, thought I was joking (or crazy) when I said I was going to "paint a nose".

Inspired by Ted Seth Jacobs

I've been reading several art books simultaneously: some on the C-Train commute to work, some at home, some when I ake a break from one of the others I'm reading.

Most recently, I've been reading Ted Seth Jacobs' first two books: Light for the Artist and Drawing with an open Mind. I consider both indispensable, since both of my primary teachers studied with Ted (as did Tony Ryder, Jacob Collins, and Michael Grimaldi - to name a few prominent artists out there). A lot of it is the same information that my instructors teach, albeit in a slightly different voice. (Tim says he can still hear Ted's voice in his head when he paints - mainly telling him how he's screwing up, from what I gather.)

Reading these books reinforces what I have learned from Tim & Michelle (which they learned in large part from Ted), and every once in a while, a key phrase sticks out: I either hear something for the first time (probably from being too thick when I was in class!), or else just hearing it in different words strikes the inside of my mind like a bell.

Case in point:

"We look at the surface of the picture to see whether the effect we want to suggest is taking place." (Light for the Artist, p. 129.)

Wow!

In other words, check your canvas to make sure that the effect you want to create is actually what it is you are busy doing on the canvas.

Sounds pretty obvious, right?

But I'll tell you, I bet I don't have a specific effect I'm going after as often as I should, and certainly don't (or I should say, "haven't", since I mean to change this immediately!) consciously ask myself if I am achieving the effect I was going after. For example, "am I creating this shadow dark enough yet allowing it to glow?," or "does the light on this face appear to glow compared to the shadow side?" I think I know that I want it to glow, but I'm not asking myself this question explicitly when painting. I think this is a subtle but important distinction.

My usual modus operandi would be to tackle the shadow, attempt to round out of it into the light, and ask myself if I am painting light enough (which I almost never am). But I don't think I'm asking "is this glowing, and if not, how do I make it glow?" Hm. I'm not sure I can articulate why I think it's important to ask myself this while actually making strokes as opposed to having it as a vaguely-formulated goal. Other than, I guess, the problem that vagueness entails.

Another one - this time in Drawing with an Open Mind (p. 29):

"The representational artist allows himself to be constantly surprised by what is seen."

Again - wow!

What an amazing way to live! Imagine being (hopefully pleasantly) surprised all the time by the myriad changing things you were seeing. (Cuz that's basically what Ted is implying: everything is different from everything else, and everything changes from one instant to the next.) Wouldn't that allow us to live with that elusive innocence of children? Imagine walking around, as if you were in a foreign city for the first time and everything is new: Wow, look at that! Check that out! Holy shit, look at that!! It reminds me of the fervent lust for living in On the Road. Which, maybe it's time to read that again. As well as Nature & Madness. (I digress.)

Imagine, too, though, the impact it could have on one's work, to be surprised and overjoyed at the strangeness of the forms one is looking at. It seems to me that it could infuse a certain dynamic energy in one's art, as well as a more organic likeness. (Which, to my thinking, Ted Jacobs carries a bit too far. To be blunt: I barely like anything the guy has done, but I am VERY appreciative of the knowledge he has!)

Anyway, I am going to try to infuse more surprise and variety into my painting and see what I come up with!

Weekly Portrait Paintings

Since the 2-day portrait workshop I took with Martinho Correira, I've been feeling extremely confident in portraiture. I should probably say in drawing, since that's where I've been progressing most, but I've also done better in the application of paint, too.

Here is the full-color painting I did of Norma:




















This piece culminates The Norma Project, although not quite how I had intended. Nevertheless, I'm fairly pleased with the result, especially given that it was painted in only one 4-hour session (not 3, as I had originally intended).

And here is my portrait of Darcy, which I painted during our weekly Sunday figure session at Isabelle's studio:




















I had planned to do a full-colour portrait, following my portrait of Norma, but with only an hour left to add colour after doing the monochrome block-in, I decided to keep it as a grisaille (so to speak).

Two-Day Atelier-Method Portrait Workshop

A couple of days ago, my drawing buddy Isabelle emailed me to say that "that guy who lives in Italy is giving a two-day portrait workshop - do you want to go?" Since I am a.) preparing for my three-week portrait workshop at Studio Escalier in France and b.) totally crazy to paint these days (especially portrait & figure), I jumped at the chance to see what he had on offer.

The first time I heard about "the guy who lives in Italy" - Martinho Correia - was when I was railing against the lack of instruction at the Alberta College of Art & Design. Somebody told me there was a realist painter who was coming to Calgary to put on a 2-week workshop. I didn't go, but I checked out his posters and kinda wished I could go. (I did, however, eventually visit the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto, which is the sister atelier, albeit the "stolen sister" in Martinho's words, of the Angel Academy in Florence, where Martinho studied and now teaches.) I have to admit that they produce some very beautiful work, "photographic-quality" in terms of drawing accuracy.

My drawing:




















My underpainting:




















My painting:

Doing the Tishes

In preparation for the alla prima workshop I will be attending, I am starting a series of poster studies and master copies. A bit of perfect timing - the plaster copies of David's eye, nose, mouth, and ear arrived a couple days ago, and I picked those up (and some wonderful small Princeton rounds) and will be drawing and painting those as practice, too.

Here's the underpainting of the first copy:
















Luckily, I have another shot at fixing all the places I screwed up: the overly-wide right cheek, the globella area, the lips, the nose, the direction of beard in the right-hand bottom corner.

Nevertheless, I think it's a fair shake for an hour's work. Especially since I kept screwing up the nose, which I thought was going to be "so easy." I was quite pleased with how the composition worked out, too: I had originally planned just to paint the nose and a bit of flesh surrounding it. But the more I crammed in, the more I liked it, until I had a closely-cropped Portrait going on.

The Young Man as a Portrait Artist

Good news: I was accepted into Studio Escalier's 2011 alla prima portrait workshop!

In advance of that, I've been busy burning hours working on elements of portraiture: drawing ears, eyes, noses, and mouths, and learning the related anatomy. I know what the sclera is. I can identify the scaphoid fossa. I've learned about the infrapalpebral furrow. The helix, tragus, and their antagonists (the anti-helix and anti-tragus) are like dear, close friends by now. I'm just not sure what in heck the caruncula is. (And the girl at Starbuck's, who coincidentally was studying the anatomy of the eye, didn't know either, and left pretty quickly after I asked.)

(Well, OK...it's a chunk of meat in the 'lacrimal lake'....but what's it do?)

I've been copying some anatomical parts from Tony Ryder's wonderful book on figure drawing - perhaps the best figure drawing book I know of. Also have at hand Stephen Rogers Peck's Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist, which has decent anatomical information but rather weirdy, plasticky-looking paintings (I guess) of the anatomical parts (not to mention extremely old-fashioned photos). Also have some photos, a number of Titian's paintings that my work was kind enough to dontae colour copies of. I plan to draw from these as much as possible (I have Peck at work to draw over lunch hours), and then to work my way up to doing copies of the Titians. I want to start doing some portrait poster studies, and then move on to doing finished paintings of, say, a nose, an ear, a caruncularly-complete eye.

The Norma Project

Norma.
Charcoal.
3 hours.

I haven't used charcoal in a long time, and was looking forward to using it again for the quickness of application. It takes much less time to fill an area with tone using charcoal than pencil, and I have regretted lately that I have been unable to do much more than a contour when figure drawing. Contour drawing, while nice, is not a "drawing"' but rather the skeleton of a drawing. As my teacher Tim says, the contour is "the place where you hang a drawing." Something along those lines. A drawing is an investigation of space, or , Tim again, "imaginary ?? In imaginary space." In other words, you need tone - the space that tone implies and creates - in order to have a "drawing." Of course, there are beautiful contour drawings, but I think there is something to this definition: without tone, a contour lies flat on the page - it remains design only - while the addition of tone (implied space) brings drawing into a deeper sphere or Art. The Art of painting is the illusion of 3D space that is created on a 2D surface. This is the difference between Drawing and mere design. Design is a part of Drawing; Drawing combines design with spatial thinking ("Drawing is sculpture by other means" - Tim, of course!), which only means that Drawing is a fuller (not better) Art.

So - I wanted to do a Drawing.

Isabelle, the host of this drawing group, casually mentioned that I could do a painting during these sessions if I wanted, and it got me to thinking about doing a capital-P Painting of Norma, and what that would require. I wrote some notes to myself and figured out that I would need to do the following:

• Prepare canvas


• Transfer my drawing


• Paint a poster study


• Brush in an underpainting, indicate background


• Fill in the background underpainting


• Paint a first pass (with a focus on the face and hand)


• Paint a second pass

To do all of this, I really only need four sessions with the model: one to do the poster study, one for the underpainting, one for the first pass, and one for the second pass. I can do a large portion of the work at home, and Isabelle gave me a photo of Norma's portrait, so I could use that as a reference at home. (In fact, I suppose I could take my own photo, from my own perspective, and work on the portrait in my own studio.) I emailed Isabelle to ask what she thought of this, and she sounded keen to do it. We may even be able to swing one or more four-hour sessions, which would be fantastic. (I need as much time as I can get - especially for the poster study, since I want to complete it in one session.)

Drawing in the Louvre

When I returned to Canada after six months of studying the figure in France, all I wanted to do was go back and continue my studies, since Calgary does not have much to offer in the way of figure drawing (certainly not long pose, anyway). I was already in what I considered the most serious-minded figure drawing group - which, at that particular moment in time, was foundering due to lack of members - and the prospect of an open-ended sojourn in this city felt like entering a creative coma. Calgary has wealth, and sometimes the City or the province throws some cash at the Arts, but generally, they waste arts funding on nonsense like the "Movement Movement" (a pun, get it?), or headlining crap like the Device to Root Out Evil, or else Cowboy art, like statues of horses or Indians or whatever, which is generally realist but somehow not my cup of tea. Nothing for the aspiring figure artist, and damn little for the aspiring artist in general (conceptual artists notwithstanding). For myself, the resources for study are few, and the opportunities to show, or to teach, or generally to make my mark remain for me to create.

So after two and a half months (during which I had exactly one session with a model), I was back in France - in Paris this time. Back at Studio Escalier, and totally excited by the prospect of drawing in the Louvre, and working with Tim & Michelle. I wasn't sure what to expect from the drawing course, other than an intense focus on drawing and a bit of French art history. I expected to get my mind blown, which I had come to expect from them, but of course, I didn't know which direction it would get blown in, and I had no way of predicting how many drawings I would come out with, or of what quality. (One of my first questions to Michelle was along the lines of how many drawings can I expect to finish during the course - which, naturally, she could not answer.)

Upon arriving in Paris, and before the course started, I drew this piece at the Musee Guimet:


The Musee Guimet houses artifacts from Asia. I had visited the museum at the end of my previous workshop at Studio Escalier, and had fallen in love with this Feminine Divinity from Rajasthan, so I spent a Sunday afternoon (roughly 4 hours) drawing her. It was perfect timing: not only is the museum free on the first Sunday of the month, but the Metro station closest to the Musee Guimet (Iena) was scheduled to close for repairs the day after I did the drawing and wouldn't open again until well after I had left Paris. So, on February 6, I got in, got it done, and felt incredibly satisfied!

After that, I drew some block-ins of the morceaux de reception (the pieces created by artists invited into the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) and simultaneously on block-ins of the model we had. For some reason - nerves, ego, depressed mood - I never drew at my best in the studio, although, thankfully, I was able to produce a few nice pieces at the Louvre. (I spoke to Tim & Michelle about this, but they were at a loss to explain it; I now put it down to wanting to impress them instead of wanting to explore drawing and be willing to fail forward.)

Happily, I did record the moment I "got it":
[insert photo]

I was blithely drawing this statue, and not doing too terribly well at it (as you can see), then I looked at what I had done and said to myself, No! That's not what the figure is doing at all! It's more like this - then proceeded to draw the 'correct' version to the right.

And there was no stopping me after that!

(Except, as I mentioned, in the studio...)

Bolstered by my newfound progress, I produced half a dozen decent drawings, of which the following are just two:


River God

Vulcan