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, Part 2

All my instructors emphasized the importance of values. In this context, value refers to the lightness or darkness of a section of a drawing, painting, or print. Very dark areas are referred to as "low" value, and very light areas as "high" value. To depict anything in a realistic manner, the values must be rendered correctly, which is harder than it sounds. Conceivably, one could work with two, three, or beyond twenty levels of value. We did lots of value studies.

This drawing (18 x 24) was a month-long value study. The model posed for 20 days, 3 hours a day (with breaks), giving me a rare opportunity to develop the drawing. However, I made the mistake of adding the background somewhat late in the process, only to discover that I had to change all the values of the figure, in order for the whole image to make spatial sense. Lesson learned!

The model below was beginning a 4 week pose, but I had to leave at the end of 4 days. I sped up my process, but the drawing (18 x 24) is unfinished. I was struck by the model's dignified bearing, and wanted to do her justice. It would have been very satisfying to show the rich darks of the shadows moving down the figure from the head, through the arm, along the leg, to the feet. Even so, I learned much from this drawing. 

My color studies over the last few years, combined with all that practice on values, helped me greatly on this 2 week figure study. Again, a wonderful model. 

Our figure painting instructor, Dan Thompson, gave me permission to be as colorful with this piece as possible, which was lots of fun. As noted, it is just a study (20 x 24), and my time ran out before I could finish that extended arm and hand.

Next post, a short tutorial on etching.

One Year of Figure Drawing Practice

Before the Upstairs Studio co-op disbanded, I used my little studio to do some "long pose" (4 hour) work with one of the figure models. That was about a year ago. Here is an example of a drawing from that period.

Looking back on it now, it is an ok drawing, but not very lifelike.

During my recent fun with our figure drawing group at University of Alaska, we were able to have long pose sessions (3 hours) a few times. Here is my first for 2013:

I saw some improvement, the figure looks more natural. But I didn't like how I failed to use the available space on the page. I vowed to get those drawings bigger!  My next effort pushed the edges nicely.

Same model, very different energy.

The school year came to a close, but we had time for a final session with one model in one pose for 3 hours. (Don't worry, they get breaks every 20 minutes. These models are truly wonderful. It takes strength and discipline to hold a pose.) Here is the last drawing. You can see that my work on hands helped me on this one.

All the drawings shown here are graphite on paper, except the third on the page, which was done with charcoal pencil on paper.

It's a great opportunity to work with a live model. Looking over these 4 drawings, I hope you will see some improvement. I encourage anyone out there learning to draw to seek out a figure drawing group and get some practice.

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.