New York Report 2

In addition to studying at the Art Students League in March, I spent time sketching in the Metropolitan Museum. For some time I have been fascinated by the figure of the Virgin in this stunning Annunciation by Memling (1465 - 75). Her face has a subtle expression of someone listening with utmost calm, unusual in an Annunciation.

After several unsuccessful attempts to draw her face, I sat on the bench in front of the painting and analyzed it geometrically.

 This is the result (still not quite perfect, but close!)

Most faces would not line up this way, but as I looked at other Madonnas, from the earliest icons to the Renaissance, I kept finding these proportions: long oval, long nose, small mouth, delicate chin. This face carries layers of meaning, century after century. Other depictions by other artist gradually became more naturalistic, but, even in this Picasso etching, the woman in the window with the white bird seems a distant echo of the ancient face.

Finally, another famous face. Here is a drawing of Alexander the Great from a Greek bronze bust in the Metropolitan Museum. As I stood drawing this I heard a lot of stories about Alexander. Parents, pastors, docents, teachers, they all had a version. Some were quite fanciful! I love the Greek bronzes, so much more lively than the most of the Roman marble statuary, many of which are copies of Greek bronze originals.

Head of a Young Girl, after Greuze

I'm still working on heads and faces.

I found a book with some great photos of drawings by the French painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725 - 1805). He painted genre scenes that are coming back into favor, though they tend to  sentimentality.

However, his drawings are another matter entirely. There is no better way to appreciate his skill than to attempt a master copy of one of his drawings. I hope to do several in the coming weeks. This Head of a Young Girl is deceptive in its simplicity. It is balanced as finely as a suspension bridge.

Here is the copy in process.

You can see that I failed to capture the subtle head tilt. I noted the error and continued, knowing that even an imperfect copy could teach me much. How did he get that expression of guileless innocence, just a bit serious, a bit sweet? I'm still wondering, but in the process I gathered some clues.

Here is the final copy. Conte pencil on paper.

More on Drawing the Figure, Anatomy

Among the books our drawing group has found useful is Fundamentals of Drawing from the Russian Academy of Arts.

Russian academic figure drawing emphasizes the planes of the body, beautifully illustrated in this book. In order to work on drawing the head and features, I made a copy of the drawing on cover.

Below is my copy, along with one last torso (a copy from a photograph I found online.)

The copy of the planes of the face was much more difficult than I anticipated!

The Russian book also provides some small examples of master work to copy.

My structural drawing of the planes of the eye , also copied from the Russian book, is at the top of the page. The two lower drawings are master copies. Above this page you see the photo reference for the eye on the bottom left. 

I still have plenty to learn. This is all harder than it looks!

Unfortunately, the examples aren't labeled. I haven't been able to figure out whose eyes are on the right, but the one on the left is from Antonella da Messina's painting, Il Condottiere. Would you have guessed the face would be so tough from just looking at the eye?

If anyone can figure out who is on the right, please let me know! I looked at hundreds of images online. You would be amazed how few figures in Renaissance (or thereabouts) paintings gaze to the viewer's right.

I recommend these exercises. I have had a lot of fun with them, and I am learning plenty. I will show more in my next post.

In the meantime, here is a page of figure studies from the live model. Pencil drawings, I believe these were 10 minute poses.

What I've been up to since November, Part 1

Yes, it has been a while! I have been working on a commission, I will post about that in a bit.

In the meantime, here are photos from another project. The Art Student Association of the University of Alaska hosts figure drawing sessions on weekends. Recently they added anatomy study sessions on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings. We do 12 hours of drawing a week, wonderful!

We pick a part of the body, study it anatomically and structurally, and follow up with master drawings, drawings from photographs, drawings from memory, and drawings from live models. It is good to get together with people who are as enthusiastic about drawing as I am, and as interested in improving figure drawing skills. We share a lot of reference material and tips. Below are some of my drawings, copies, and references .

 Classic Human Anatomy, The Artist's Guide to Form, Function, and Movement by Valerie L Winslow, is very useful for its clear diagrams and text.  Some pages I worked from:

Below are my drawings. If you want to learn something, you can't go wrong by making a drawing.

On the page above, I also copied a drawing by the French 18th -19th century artist Jacques-Louis David.

Arnold Schwartzenegger's The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding is a bodybuilding classic. I use it for the photographs. Bodybuilders don't look like the rest of us, but the muscles are easy to see. On this page: my copy of a photograph of the young Arnold's back.  Below that is my copy of a drawing by French 18th c artist Joseph-Marie Vien.  You can see how copying different references makes sense, if one's goal is to depict the figure well.

 Below are some recent drawings from live models. Compared to earlier efforts, my drawings are coming through with more energy and accuracy. I look forward to more improvement.

I'm also having fun experimenting with different mediums. The above drawing is  group of quick pen and ink sketches. The one below, from a longer pose, is conte pencil.

More on all this in the next post.