My smallest brush was a large round size 6. It was a great way to prevent myself from getting too tight too soon so that I could properly work from general to specific. Also, in a 3 hour sketch (I’m just used to much longer) I usually run out of time before I an get to anything specific and I find that this can be a good thing for me.

oil sketch, 18" x 24"

Another great resource on drawing from memory is also now available here. Drawing from memory: The Cavé method for learning to draw from memory, written by Marie Elisabeth Blavet Cavé. Here’s a portrait of Madame Cavé, painted by Ingres, from The Met’s permanent collection:

Cavé portrait, by Ingres

The first line of the book starts out with the sentence,

“This is the only method of drawing which really teaches anything.”

I can’t say I fully agree that it’s the only method of drawing that teaches one how to draw, but it certainly shouldn’t sit on the bench. Hours, weeks, months and years of learning how to draw accurately from direct observation has been immensely helpful (and frustrating at times); it has really helped me train my eye. Drawing from memory on the other hand helps me test my knowledge and thus has helped me train my mind.

On a side note, I think that this is also why I find the sculpture and ecorche classes that I’m taking with Steve Perkins so helpful. Besides the fact that working from 3D to 3D has allowed me to really understand the form, masses, rhythm and structure of the human body more directly, Perkins’ rare knowledge of the forms and masses and how he presents this information works to build up my memory of the figure. I find that I am able to store this information of patterns in a simple way – I think of it as a diagrammatic, yet organic, hierarchical filing system. But I digress…

Both books describe wonderful and fun exercises in how to test your observational memory. We have a 4-week long pose this month and after spending this last week on compositional studies and a drawing study, I begin the underdrawing/painting this coming week. I plan to test myself with this month’s pose by trying out a drawing from memory next weekend.

I’d love to follow-up with a memory sketch in clay, but I’ll see how the drawing goes first. I imagine the 3D version will only stand a chance if I really understand the pose from a structural construct rather than a purely optical/shape approach. The prospect of finding out how much I possibly don’t know about about a pose I spend 80 hours on is a scary thought…but I guess I should find out sooner than never. I’ll post both memory sketches (2D and 3D) over the next two weeks.

Under certain lighting conditions, for example with front light or under a strong spotlight, with the subject against a dark background, the dark tones at the edge of an object may be absorbed into the background and what we really see in this instance is an area just inside the edge of the form instead of the dark light. The outermost edge of this zone blends into the background. This creates the illusion of softer edges instead of a crisp separation between the object and background. The basic lesson is what we’ve heard over and over again, we must pay attention to the edges and work very carefully at the meeting of forms. A great example is an image I’ve posted here before.

Notice how the edge of the shoulder as it turns into the form of the back is very soft, while the edge of the upper forearm of the left arm against a light drapery is much more crisp. We can also contrast the field effects happening in the skull and the right arm. The skull has a softer edge as the top of the head as it turns away from us toward the background and enters the dark light, while the right arm (also turning away from us into the background) is more lit and its dark light zone is not near the edge of the arm placed against the background. Thus the difference in their edge treatment. (At least this is how I rationalize my reading of how Caravaggio treated the two edges differently.) He may have just been copying what he saw, which proves that how he painted what he saw is accurate with visual phenomena. Yet, I suspect that he was aware of these patterns in nature and didn’t just copy nature by rote in his practice. (There are also other reasons why the skull has a softer edge than the right arm.)

For the painting I worked on in Sarah Lamb’s workshop, she had me pay attention to the edge of the gourd which was in the dark light region, against the darker background of the wooden box. This edge was much softer than the opposing edge more directly facing the light source against a cast shadow on the same dark wooden box.

With a backlit subject, the same field effects would occur with the opposite observation. Edges would be softer on the light edge against a light background as some of this lighter zone would be absorbed into the background and harder on the darker side of the form against the lighter background. This is also consistent with the rule that high contrast areas are often the sharpest areas in a painting/nature.

There are many different field effects in nature which I have yet to learn and fully understand. In essence, everything in our visual experience is a field effect since we never see objects in nature in isolation, especially color. The cognitive experience of visual phenomena is a product of many different optical illusions and our eyes are lying to our brains (or is it our brains lying to our eyes, therefore lying to itself? …If anyone knows of any books on this topic, please let me know and shoot me an email! I love this stuff!!).

We discussed another field effect at the edges of a form, in relation to color, which I’ll write as a separate post later this week. I’ve indulged in my musings enough for the evening (making good use of that extra hour we gained from Daylight Savings this weekend). It’s time to finish preparing my panels for this week’s intensive workshop-style class with Michael at the studio.

—-
Though I haven’t had any issues, I thought it wise to add the statement below:

Art Student’s/Blogger’s Caveat:
Everyone should always take this in consideration when reading any blog, but I’ll state it here just to be clear. Everything written on my personal blog is my interpretation of my studies and in no way should be taken as the exact teaching itself. Though I strive to understand and represent all the concepts fully and back up my writing/notes with examples, other more established posts/articles/books, science, visual phenomena, etc. there is always room for error and misunderstanding so it is the reader’s responsibility to cross-reference anything they read here. In case of any error brought to my attention, I will always point them out ASAP. (And of course, if you’ve heard otherwise or spot any incongruities, please shoot me an email since I created this blog to develop a greater, ongoing conversation amongst like-minded people and artists.)

For the final pass, I wanted to concentrate on the textures and discoloration of the object. I also wanted to be able to show the simple form of the ladle despite the variation in its local color. Overall it was a fun painting to work on and though simple it brought forth many lessons for me to learn from in terms of painting local color, light effect, color/temperature variation, chroma control, form painting and paint handling.

Rusty Ladle, oil on board

Next time, I will need to improve the edge quality and edge variation a bit more.

Rusty Ladle, 2nd Pass

Edges, color adjustments (decrease chroma) and working on the lighter end of my value range were my primary concerns this round. I struggled with the tungsten light source during the first pass. The warmth of the bulb is quite distracting so I took some time to assess the local color and the affect of the light source on it for this pass.

My poster study was a good reference and tool in helping me correct the key of the painting from the first pass, though it could have served me better. I found that my poster study was too chromatic overall and it was also missing the higher parts of the value range. To a lesser degree I repeated those mistakes, so I spent a good chunk of my time this round fixing the parts that I had made too green or yellow or too chromatic.

Once it looked like the color and value adjustments were working out both on the ladle and on the background, I concentrated on minutia and some details of texture. I hope to build up some of the rusty textures on top of this pass during my next and final round. Critiques or suggestions welcome.

Rusty Ladle

This is the first pass to the still life set-up of a simple rusty ladle. It’s under artificial lighting, and you can check out the poster study here. I’m attracted to the simplicity of the object, its colors and the old, rusty texture of the metal. And I just love the high contrast of the dark cast shadow to the light blasting the background and top section of the ladle.

I decided against a grisaille and started directly with an ébauche (first pass or underpainting, always in color – at least in the tradition/approach practiced by Bouguereau and other 19th Century painters), simply because the value range of the composition is so small and compressed. I wanted a base with color and value decisions in the underpainting to work off of for the following pass. It seemed that building on top of this and layering the textures on top of something with form, color and value made the most sense.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Right at the end of my break, I was fortunate enough to take a 3-day Still Life workshop with Sarah Lamb. It’s my second attempt at a still life, as I’ve been working mostly from the figure. One of the most difficult things for me was to attempt to achieve a finished painting in 3 days since I am used to longer poses. It was great to push myself to paint at this speed, draw with a paint brush and approach things from a more mass-oriented way rather than linear. It exercised different muscles, so to speak and I walked away feeling a lot more confident with the paint brush. Sarah Lamb was a wonderful teacher and her still life paintings are beautiful — well-drawn, painterly while still capturing the subtlety in her subject matter.

I learned a lot about composition in regards to setting up objects for a still life (which, in my opinion, is much harder than it looks and is nothing like setting up the figure). We also discussed cropping, Ted Seth Jacobs, field effect, materials and color. We started with a poster study, moved on to an quick drawing/underpainting and pushed it to a finished painting as much as we could in the three days. This is how far I got in the painting. The glare makes parts of the painting a little difficult to see in my photo, but alas…

Still Life with Gourd

I start a 4-day portrait painting class with Kate Lehman tomorrow and beginning this Friday I’m on my own upstate where I’ll have space and quiet for 2 months (well, and freelance deadlines). I’ll also be back to posting regularly. Hope everyone had a great 4th of July celebration!

Sketch of a small terracotta sculpture

Here’s a sketch from my latest visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Museums – such as the MET – provide an abundant amount of  interesting and beautiful things to sketch, from 2D & 3D artwork to museum visitors and guards. On a rainy day, it’s the perfect place! However, what caught my attention this visit were the terracotta sculptures nearby in the European Sculptures section of the museum. This sketch is from a very small bust by Jules Dalon, a French sculptor from the 19th Century.  It is most likely a study for a larger piece. Yes, that’s right, a sketch of a sketch!

This week I’ll be posting more sketches and studies so keep an eye out!