New York Report

I spent all of March, 2015, in New York city, where I immersed myself in studies, including figure drawing, figure painting, and still life painting. I also made several visits to  the Prints and Drawings library of the Metropolitan Museum. Here is just one of the many great drawings I got to see with nothing between me and it but a few centimeters of air. It's by Tiepolo, 18th c.

The librarians are wonderful, and you can request to view any of the thousands of original works they have in safekeeping. I learned so much by getting up close to Rembrandt etchings and drawings, works by Rubens, Tiepolo, Fragonard, Durer, Van Gogh, and Picasso, among others. I will incorporate my memories of those etchings and drawings in my own work from here on.

The weather was really cold! And I got the flu in my first week, with the result that I did not bring anything I started to completion. Perhaps that was as well, since the point of such a trip is to form new skills, not to make masterpieces. My main concentration was on rendering the figure.

If I had the time and energy the image above would have become a painting. However, the opportunity to work with this wonderful model over a few days was a privilege in itself. 

I got going with color on my next effort, below. With the encouragement of my teacher Daniel Thompson, who is known for his daring use of color, I let loose a bit. Sometimes less caution can be helpful, at least in terms of color decisions.  

My approach to color in figure painting moved forward with this piece, I want to do more experimenting.

I worked on the piece below in a class taught by another terrific instructor, Michael Grimaldi. Taking his classes has inspired me to make a serious study of anatomy. To that end, I spent a week last August at the Stanford University dissection lab, in a class taught by Michael Grimaldi and Daniel Thompson. It made a great difference in my perception of the human form, and I want to go back for more.

This drawing looks dark because I toned the paper with charcoal before I began the work. This was never going to be a work of art: it is  an investigation of the figure, its construction, movement, and relation to light. I would have loved to keep working on it for several more days, but I had to fly home. You can see that I was struggling to find the right forms for that left arm! It comes down to more study, more observation. Beside the figure is a drawing of the skeletal substructure to the pose, and another of the lights and darks on the model and in the background, with a dark-to-light scale drawn along the left border.

The models at the Art Students League are extraordinary. This young woman held this pose for 15 hours a week for 4 weeks! ( I'm sad that I only got to draw her for about one week.)

More about my studies in NYC in my next post.

Report from New York, Art Students League Part 1

I spent the month of October in New York, attending classes at the Art Students League. I was following in the footsteps of my grandfather, Jack Lambert. He attended the Art Students League approximately 100 year ago, then went on to be a well known political cartoonist, as well as a portraitist and sculptor. I had fun picturing him working alongside me in the same studios!

My instructors, Michael Grimaldi for figure drawing, Dan Thompson for figure drawing and painting, and Bill Behnken for printmaking, were all outstanding. I also admire and appreciate the models who pose for ASL classes. They maintain the same position during every class period for up to 4 weeks. Their talent and professionalism are key to the student experience.

Our instructors emphasized the importance of understanding, at great depth, the energy and structure of a living body. In the drawing below, if you look very closely, you will see that I made lines going through the figure, noting the angle of hips, ribcage, head, and feet in relation to the entire figure. (The lines are easier to see if you click on the image to enlarge.) I also found anatomical landmarks, such as the top of the pelvis, and the connection point of the thigh and hip bones. Learning to get these angles and structures right saves a lot of trouble later on! This was a 20 minute pose.

Later in the month we worked with much shorter poses, and I found that practice had brought me some progress. Below is a page from my last week at ASL, four 5-minute poses (the arrows indicate light direction.)

I got to work on the same kind of "starting moves" in Dan Thompson's painting class. In the oil sketches below, I tried to capture the model's gesture and energy, while also noting the physical structures most key to the pose.

On this next one you can see Dan Thompson's visual notes on the right side, helping me to see how to keep the whole figure as open as possible as I worked.

This is not glamorous stuff, but it is very important to the skill and craft of being a painter. If anyone reading this went to an art school where these things were not taught, I know you are jealous reading this! Next post, a little more color, I promise.

More Anatomy Study, Hands

I said in my last post that the next one would feature a master copy of a charming young woman, but I got sidetracked. My figure drawing efforts were running into trouble in the hand department, so I took a trip over to that part of the body.

There is a fine old tradition of drawings of the artist's left hand. Here is my left hand, done about a year ago, I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but I offer it as comparison for what I have been doing recently.

Following the sequence our study group uses, I copied some construction drawings and a master drawing. Below you see two drawings of the hand as a set of squared off parts. I copied the top one from the Russian Academy book I have mentioned before, Fundamentals of Drawing. I found the bottom one in Dynamic Anatomy by Burne Hogarth.

The drawing on the right side of the page above is my master copy, also from Burne Hogarth's book. Below you see a photo of Hogarth's drawing, which I used for reference.

Then I got to work on the drawing from life. My 2013 left hand, below, took a bit longer than the one I made in 2012. I can see that these studies are helping me to develop anatomical understanding.

I hope you find these exercises interesting. There will probably be some pretty ladies in the next post.