jayme del rosario | sketchblog

Here’s a drawing copy of a Bargue plate I completed via the sight-size approach. Essentially it requires drawing what you see from a specific distance. The vertical plumb is very important and the mirror became my best friend in trying to spot all the drawing mistakes for correction. The black mirror came in handy when trying to get all the values exact in my copy. This approach shares many similarities with the usual block-in/envelope approach where everything is done by eye first and measuring is a way to correct rather than construct a drawing.

back, male torso (Bargue Plate 56)

The left column features a schematic to aid you in approaching the “block-in” for the Bargue copy while the one next to it is the finished drawing. The drawing on the right column is my finished drawing.

poster study

Here’s a quick poster study of a very simple set-up under artificial light. Again, I just wanted to key the painting, not get too finnicky, and to stay abstract and simple. More tomorrow…back to my daylight set-up which I had to let dry a couple of days.

At Janus Collaborative School of Art, where I’m currently doing my art training, we work directly from the figure, under a gorgeous skylight/north light. As beautiful as it is to paint under natural light, I sometimes miss the dramatic contrast of light and shadow.

Caravaggio was a master of chiaroscuro and his naturalistic painting style was in direct contrast to the idealistic views during the Renaissance. This was quite effective in his religious, narrative paintings as the apostles and disciples were depicted as human instead of “godly” or mythical beings.

Sometimes he controlled the light source and light direction by blocking much of the strong light flooding in through a window or a door. Other times, he used candles to light his subjects. The areas of the subject nearest to the candlelight are very brightly lit and everything else rapidly turns into the shadow (since the light dissipates very quickly). Notice how the reflective light is minimized. Caravaggio often surrounded his subjects with dark cloth or dark walls in order to diminish any bounced light onto his subject.

This type of set-up is a very effective way to create a strong design and lead the viewers eye across the tableau. James Gurney writes more about chiaroscuro in his wonderful blog (which you should be following if you’re not already doing so). I’m far from a narrative painting (though sketchbooks are a great way to work out some of these ideas), but I’m using the opportunity of having access to such a wonderful studio to paint some subjects under dramatic lighting this summer. Plus, there are no city or street lights to get in the way of my shadows up here!

In working with all these still life subjects I’ve ambitiously set-up for myself, I’m having trouble juggling and following through with the documentation process. So please bare with me, I’m sure I will improve.  I forgot to take pictures of the block-in process for this still life subject so I’ll discuss it briefly.

I began by drawing directly with a brush in an attempt to approach this painting “loosely” as I learned through Sarah Lamb’s workshop. Being more comfortable with getting the drawing “right” first – usually with pencil then transferring, I wanted to mix things up a bit this time. This confidence also springs from the fact that still life subjects are often more forgiving than the figure. Regardless of the drawing tool, it was the usual block-in stuff where I began with a loose envelope, then slowly broke this down to straight block-in lines with a lot of triangulation plus usage of vertical and horizontal plumbs “by eye” – and a knitting needle.

I resolved the drawing as well as I could. Once I had something accurate enough to build the underpainting on, I went in with brown and scumbled a very thin wash. This took place early on as I tried to treat the drawing and underpainting with a more mass drawing approach rather than a linear approach. With this technique there is more juggling with the drawing and so I continue to work on the drawing careful not to let the medium get too sloppy. The important things I keep in mind is to always improve the drawing, not lose the drawing by painting and covering lines I want to keep and I make sure things remain thin. I plan to build paint up in the lights especially since there is a lot of texture on the metal bowl and ladle.

Still Life with Garlic, underpainting

My underpainting is really a monochromatic wash-in though I used two colors, a warm and a cool, to map out the temperature changes. I first simplified things by starting with the darkest dark and moved from there. The neutral gray ground played a very strong role in how I simplified my values, slowly building up the underpainting from three values, on to four, five, etc until I was satisfied in suggesting the volume of the objects. The underpainting was “done” once I worked out the overall value and temperature relationships of the entire composition as well as I could.

Here is my poster study for the still life I’m working on during the day. The point is to make a color and value study of the composition so that you can key your final picture and use the poster to assure that the composition – including individual elements – are “keyed correctly” in relation to each other. It’s not about drawing, but an abstract study about color relationships.

Poster Study - Still Life with Garlic

I tried to keep the shapes as simple and as abstract as possible without compromising the composition too much. Parts of the background are slightly more chromatic than it should be in the final painting. I found it challenging to lay down flat color and value patches when many elements require indirect color/painting to achieve its effect. Regardless, I would attempt to find the most accurate average, mix and lay it down thickly, trying not to fuss with it unless it needed correction.

I’m now in upstate NY for the rest of the summer where I’ll be concentrating mostly on still life paintings, as well as work on a few landscape studies, sketches and paintings “alla prima”. I spent most of the time today looking through a friend’s still life objects and figuring out what objects/subject to tackle first. In the academy, we’ve mostly been working from the live model and even though the subject of composition is thoroughly discussed and analyzed by our instructors, setting up a still life is much more time consuming than I could ever have imagined. (I found out that Chardin would spend hours setting up his still life compositions).

After selecting and editing which objects to put in the composition, looking at some master still life painters and paintings, and doing A LOT of rearranging, I finally reached something simple enough yet interesting as a composition. Alas! now the light is gone and I will have to start tomorrow; but this allows me some time to gesso and prime some supports for subsequent paintings.

In my research, I learned a few things about how to set-up a still life.

• Pay attention to positive AND negative shapes
• Keep the composition balanced
• Do spend serious time and thought into setting up the objects; take as much time rearranging things around as you need
• It helps to look at still life paintings of old masters to get some ideas on how you can arrange things
• Paint subjects you are drawn to

I have also set up a still life for the evening in which the light source is artificial and controlled. I’ll post my poster studies for both and write about my next step in tomorrow’s entry.