Series 2 - Pencil

Series 2 pencil sketch:


This is the pencil sketch for the 2nd series. I changed the composition a little, lowered the kettle to fit the handle in....which obviously wasn't entirely successful. I could have raised the top of the entire picture, but I didn't feel it was important. In fact, I kind of like the way the handle juts out.

What I like about this picture is the line work. I started the hatching as normal, but I've been experimenting with the direction and size and patterning of my hatchwork, and I think it worked in this picture. I like the lines that appear in the background (I've been trying to produce that effect, and for some reason couldn't do it to my satisfaction before.) I also like the tea kettle overall. And the ceramic jug.

What I don't like about this drawing is the spout, which was done poorly overall, and in particular, in the darkest spot where the spout meets the kettle, I damaged the paper with the pencil. I had a hard time with the hatching on the smaller spout, and it shows. Flushed with my newfound technique, I rushed into the colouring of the spout, not taking my time, and in the process, I ruined it. After erasing and re-hatching, I kind of gave up.

Likewise, the cloth is of course unfinished. I liked the overall patterning at first, but (I hate to admit it!), I grew bored working on the cloth, and hatched a little too hastily, which ruined what I had achieved up to that point. (I think a good break would have been in order. But I was eager to finish this piece and move on.)

I've also been thinking (since working on the charcoal drawing of this tea kettle), that it would make more sense to move the light so that the highlight is more central. The only problem is that in that case, the shadow would disappear entirely from the jug. Which may mean either that I'd do better to make the highlight on the spout the focal point...or else the composition just doesn't work overall. To my mind, the highlight is way too far to the right.

Anyway, I don't think the entire sketch is ruined, and if I really wanted, I could go back in there and spruce it up. I don't really see myself doing that, but you never know!

Small Sketch Series 2

Here is the first drawing from Series 2, done in charcoal:

Starting Small Sketch Series

I've been mulling over what exactly to do in my home studio as daily practice. Do I work on finished pieces? Do I do a bunch of practice sketches and then follow up with a finished piece? I really wasn't sure what to do to keep my hand in it every week. But after checking out this website, I decided that the idea of small sketches was a good one, and that's what I am doing right now (with the odd more finished piece thrown in from time to time). I'm doing things slightly different than the artist on that website: my series is one charcoal drawing, one pencil drawing, and one oil painting of the same object(s).

I originally intended to do an ongoing series of small sketches a year ago, but didn't follow through. This is my start:

(The pieces are still in a notebook, and I have only recently taped a piece of wax paper over them for protection, so the charcoal is a bit worse for wear.)

This is the first series a year later:



It's pretty embarrassing. The problem turned out to be trying to stick to a rigid schedule of producing an entire series of sketches each week. I had scheduled Monday for pencil, Tuesday for charcoal, Wednesday for oil, Thursday for figure drawing (not part of this series), then weekends for catching up. But it turns out that I only had time to do that during the holidays-and barely enough time even then! So I rushed to finish each piece on time, which meant that the end result was of poor quality. I don't like to do that, so I've changed my expectations to basically one piece per week, as opposed to an entire series of 3 sketches per week. Hopefully I can do better than that, and part of my goal is to motivate myself to work more, and more often, in the studio. But I don't want to sacrifice quality for quantity.

Here is the oil sketch:

Small sketch series starting soon

I've been following this guy's website for a while, and thinking of doing some of the exercises that he did (specifically, the series of sketches; I'm a sucker for a series!) and posting them here. At the moment, I only have the evenings and weekends to work on my art, so it may be somewhat slow going, but that's OK. My intention is to do one small sketch in pencil, charcoal, and oil per week, and to execute them in order from Monday to Wednesday, then finish up on Fridays or the weekend as necessary.

Although they are much smaller than the size I am used to working at (I tend to fill a 9"x12" page, which is how I was taught), they are actually a lot larger than the drawings on that website (his are generally 3"x5, I think), because a.) I am not working sight-size, and b.) I have no desire to work that small. This, I think, will present a challenge for me to finish them in time - especially if I add in a cloth, which is always fiddly for me. BUT, the way to progress is to work on what is most challenging, so that's what I intend to do. (But because they are relatively small, I am hoping this will motivate me to finish them, especially when I am close to finished and only need a little more time to complete the drawing - instead of abandoning something that I know needs another 6-8 hours of work.)

In fact, I'd also like to do a series of cloth studies. (Watch for it!) In one of my classes at ACAD, we had to do a series ...hmmm...what was it? I ended up doing a series of my clothes, but I can't recall if it was a cloth study, or simply Draw Something in Your Bedroom kinda thing. Anyway, I ended up doing some drawings of my clothes that I really liked.

Well....here they are!


(I think I did some others, but this was the 'triptych' for the assignment.)

Still Life with Red Pear

I walked into Safeway and saw this pear, and my jaw just dropped. The hue was so intense, it just called out to be painted. So I heeded the call and built a still life around it

(I have to state that this is a truly awful photo of this painting!)

In this still life, I tried a few new things:

It's the first time I attempted stem-with-leaves. I used the palette knife on its edge, which David Leffel showed me how to do. (I've been dying to try it out since then!) I'm going to try this in some upcoming still lifes. It's tricky to get the stem thin enough, and I want to work on that so I can add this to my painting repertoire. A stem with some kind of flora always seems to add a nice flourish.

• The lighter side of the background, filled in with a tint of a somewhat complementary colour, meant to define the colour of "air" in the painting. I think it could get a bit lighter. In fact, the entire painting needs more light.
  
• The "halo" of colour around the pear (not very visible in this photo). This is also something that David Leffel does, and I've been meaning to try it. The idea is that the light it so intense that it saturates the air around it, even bleeding into the background.

Some things that I would have liked to do better:

• Location location location! When I started this still life, all of the objects were slightly bigger, and I decided they should be smaller, but SOMEHOW when I reduced them in size, everything got stuck kinda smack-dab in the centre of the painting, which annoys me, but by the time I was conscious of it, it was way too late to fix.


• I think the pear is OK as-is, but for some reason, it took me a bunch of times painting and re-painting to get it into decent shape. It's not a tricky subject, I just wasn't happy with how it looked until I got it to this point.

Figure painting (Melissa)

This is the best painting I have done of a model to date:




I spent three 3-hour sessions on it, and could have had a 4th, but I missed a day due to: hangover, being stuck in snow, needing a day off. (Mostly hangover, though.) Sure, there are some things wrong with it, things I'd like to fix, things I can't fix, but I think I also just need to accept my paintings that are less than Rembrandt quality and move on...

What I am happy about in this painting:

• I got the skin variations a little closer together.
• I got so much done on the first day that I was blown away! I'd done a preliminary drawing (or actually two, if I recall correctly), so I knew where the pitfalls were (ie: leg/hip size - a pitfall I fell back into while painting!), but otherwise, I was familiar with the figure and able to get the composition down with minimal difficulty. (Although for some reason, I was absolutely unable to shrink the figure down to say 80% of its size, which I think would have fit the composition better: I wanted the figure to be smaller in relation to the overall picture size. By the way, this photo is cropped slightly.)
• I was pleased with how I put the face in: not overly detailed. I find this quite difficult, and even this one has slightly too much detail, but it's totally acceptable. (To me.) (Right now.) I'd wanted to focus on her torso, with a glow coming off her flesh there, and the extremities of lesser importance. I think I more or less managed to achieve that. Except that....

Difficulties with this painting:

• ...I had a hard time keeping the paint on her belly interesting. It's such an expanse of flesh, and it feels kind of like driving the prairies, with not an interesting landmark in sight!
• It was difficult to keep the shadow values on her stomach, close to the ground. In fact, they're still not dark enough. I had a similar problem on her chest.
• I did a great job blocking in her left hand (resting on her side), then went in and thoroughly destroyed it. I kind of salvaged it at the end, but it never came out as good as I had originally blocked it in. (Damn!)

Figure Painting (Dustin)

[OK: ewwww!!! The photo was too discoloured - made him look sickly green.!)


Anyway, I haven't done a painting from a model in a long time, so it was time to get back to that. This was an OK start, but, yeah, it has its problems (tubular left leg, for example, and splotchy skin disease).

Some problems I had while painting this were:

1.) deciding how to represent the background. I wanted him to emerge from the shadows, which he didn't in real life, so I had to invent some of that. And I wasn't even sure what colour to make the background, which impacted my colour choice for the shadows on the skin.

2.) Well, skin colour. Partly made worse by not deciding on a background colour. But also creating excessive colour variations, such as the really pink skin on the cheeks and the greenish skin on the arms.

3.) Focusing more on the crossed arms and less on the face. I find it really difficult to "abstract" a face in order to focus attention elsewhere. (In this case, on the crossed arms.) I pretty much blew it here, but that's what practice is for.

Anyway, this was a good jump back into painting the figure, even if it isn't wildly successful. I haven't decided whether to keep this one (and possibly rework it?) or else paint over it. Don't have to decide for a while, though. Like until I move or run out of canvas. (I AM tempted to touch it up, but without the model, it may be a futile exercise, as I won't have the information in front of me.) At any rate, it got me ready for the next figure painting, which was somewhat more successful.

Drawing of Nicole

This is one of my latest figure drawings.

I've been trying to speed up in my drawings (ie: do one, and sometimes more than one, drawing per session). In fact, if I remember correctly, this is one of three drawings I did that night. I executed the drawing in charcoal, and I recall wanting to add colour to it, but not being quite sure how or where to do it, so I left it as-is. I don't like to shy away from trying something difficult, but on the other hand, sometimes I want to leave with a "decent" drawing that hasn't been destroyed by too much media (which is how I usually ruin my drawings).

I'm trying to learn how to add only the essential coloring: ie: the barest minimum to give the effect of colour and dimension, but without (necessarily) colouring the entire thing from corner to corner.

Oh yeah: the face in this one was actually a somewhat new way of working for me: I didn't shoot for replicating the model's features, just blocked in the shadows as accurately as possible. I think it worked out better than some of my drawings in which I go after the features with more detail. Obviously, I could take this drawing a lot farther (and I'm considering re-working some of my figure drawings that I don't think quite stand alone in the future), but it's a decent start for me.

Biding time at the threshold

I met with my life coach last night one final time. He's a cool guy; I recommend him to anyone needing a little direction. He asked me how things are going. I told him what's brewing:

• I am registered for a calligraphy and a drawing course at ACAD. The calligraphy course is for fun and cuz my handwriting is embarrassing. The drawing instructor is this Chinese guy. John Chong, who apparently is an excellent Classical draughtsman. I am HOPING that he's really good and that I can take lessons with him. (Um...I'm a little unsettled by the painting on that page; I hope his stuff is generally much better than this. Otherwise, I may not pursue anything past this one course.)
• I am in the Unseen Art show for another week, and then the Art Point Society has invited me to apply for membership in September, which I am going to do, and as a member, I have the right to put on a solo show whenever the space is available (once a year), so I am thinking about a solo show already. Probably next April or May kinda time frame.
• I am teaching a drawing workshop (tentatively titled Drawing Volume and Light from the Still Life) on November 7 at the Calgary School of Art. Depending on how that pans out, I will a.) make some money, b.) potentially get some students. I am hoping to teach a regular drawing and oil painting class.
• I am hoping to go to Studio Escalier next summer. Geoff is hoping to go, too. If I don't do that, I may go to the Art Students League for a month or two or three. I want to get SOME kind of instruction next year. (And if I am not asked to remain after my job contract finishes, I may well end up at the ASL full-time.)

Anyway, it feels to me as though I am on the verge of doing good things, but they just haven't started yet. Which is fine. I can use this time to work hard on my skills, on some pieces. For instance, I need to get a drawing up at the Calgary School of Art to advertise my workshop. I have started it, but you do ONE thing and it takes up all your time and suddenly it's 9:00 and you haven't drawn yet and you're already dog tired and looking for a shower. That's what happened last night. Met with HAMMER, and got home around 7:00, ate, walked my dog, then suddenly had no time to work. That's why I want to be doing this full-time. Otherwise, I won't get very far, because I have so little time to devote to it.