jayme del rosario | sketchblog

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.

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.

I’m back from my “blog sabbatical”! I had a few illustrations to work on for my freelance work and I also enjoyed a small, small break to recharge before a two month “retreat” upstate. I’ll be spending the rest of the summer in a converted church to paint still lives, landscapes, and perhaps some of the locals from town who I meet along the way. If anyone knows of any great places to see some artwork by the Hudson, please let me know.

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!