Winter Experiments

The Winter session just ended at Manifest, so I pulled some pieces off the studio wall and photographed them. This is admittedly a mixed bag, and maybe I'll work into them a bit.

I'm trying to find ways of applying the pastel without obliterating the linework or smothering it with too much rendering.

I'm also trying to improve my color. Everytime I try to push it a bit, I get something unnatural or garish.

Another Oldie

Uh, the art that is. This one is from the old Court Street sessions about 4 years ago.

The marks are a bit coarse and the chair's straights and curves aren't perfectly formed, but I got a figure, some environment and a pretty interesting expression in just under an hour. I'm pretty happy with that.

Flashbacks

These are a couple of quick pastel drawings I did at Manifest months ago.

I particularly like the simplicity and abstract quality of this first one (above). The black lines are sensitive enough and didn't get obliterated by the chalk, which happens too often in my figures.

Fall Session

It's been a rough fall session at Manifest with one bright spot. I managed to capture this male model in crude slashes of pastel. I was paying particular attention to the values and only varied my palette in the last 10 minutes. The face could use some refining, but I'm happy with the torso the way it is.

The composition is a bit static, but when cropped, the image greatly improves, I think.

Three Portraits

Here's a trio of portraits all done during Court Street sessions over the year. I focus on heads when the face is more inspiring than the pose.



It's especially gratifying when I can capture the essence of the person with a few well-laid strokes.

Backlit Figure

This is a drawing I finished at the end of the fall session. Having the figure backlit is a double-edged sword. It can be interesting to have the figure accentuated with a dramatic halo. On the negative side, you find yourself fumbling for certain colors in the dark, and you really don't know what you've got on the paper until the session ends. This time I was pleased.



This was also done in the late fall. I think it's a nice start, but the details in the face kept me from fully developing the image. There are some unresolved hints of color and value in the environment that need to be strengthened before I'd call this a successful sketch. Great pose though.

Pensive

Here's a drawing I did several years ago during a Court Street session. It was a 15-20 min. pose, which is a nice length of time —short enough for an interesting pose, but still allowing enough time to check proportions and develop the mid-tones a bit.



Up till now, I've been digitizing these drawings on my tiny flatbed scanner. Each one had to be carefully scannedin 6 pieces and tiled together using Photoshop. It takes well over an hour to complete the scanning and assembling of each image, which may go a long way to explain the long time intervals between posts. This weekend, I decided to set up a tripod and shoot some drawings on the living room floor (which makes my wife wince.) My technique is far from perfect, and it still requires a lot of color-adjustment to approximate what's on the paper. Still, I hope it allows me to post more frequently.

Reclining Figure

This is another piece created during the fall sessions at Manifest. Just about an hour and a half pose.



It's always a challenge, but I like foreshortened subjects. I like seeing long limbs transformed into compact shapes not usually associated with the human figure.