Another Seated Female

Seated Female

Latest Watercolor Exercises

These two watercolor sketches are from the first two weeks of the fall session at Manifest. I'm pretty happy with the progress overall.

I've been trying to work in a bolder looser fashion. I'm also trying to forfeit a lot of control to the medium itself, which parodoxically gives the illusion of control in the final result.

These imperfect reproductions were taken with a point and shoot camera. I'll try to get scanned versions later —tiling them takes hours.

Profile in Pastel

This is pastel drawing I made a few sessions ago at Manifest. It's been tacked to the wall for months and I felt it was time to take it down. The piece as a whole wasn't stellar, but I was happy enough with the face.

Seated Female Figure

I painted this one on Tuesday at Manifest. I wish had been more attentive to the proportions, but I think my handling of the watercolor has improved, and I'm reaching for a greater diversity of marks. This time, I added shadows with very watery layers of red and purple, which I think creates that luminosity that one expects from watercolor. It's a lighter piece overall —I generally prefer more darks —but appropriately soft for a nude female figure at rest.

Male Profile

This is a detail from a larger sketch of a male model. His expression came out a bit angry-looking. Probably a result of my caricaturing his brow a little.

I'm still evaluating this one. I like some of the details: the ear and sideburns, and the crazy tuft of hair, but some more control of the values and gradations in the flesh tones would help a lot. The shadow under the chin particularly bugs me.

Reclining Female

More practice with watercolor figures. I'm trying to allow the drawing underneath to play a larger role in the final piece.

I prefer the detail of the upper body, but here's the full piece below anyway:

Backside

Another attempt at controlling watercolor.

I'm obviously not in full command of where the water will take the pigment, but I can control roughly, the shape of the individual marks as well as their value. When you can orchestrate shapes and values, you can begin to create the illusion of a 3-dimensional forms on your paper, so it's a start. Another thing I can control is the composition in pencil before I go to the wet media. Admittedly, this composition is not particularly exciting —I chose the back view to give myself a better exercise in modeling the human form in watercolor.

I'm happy with the marks in the folds of the blue cloth, and I kinda like that little bit of her right arm where the shadow picks up a bit of reflected red light.

Reclining Figure in Watercolor

I took watercolors to my figure-drawing session last Tuesday, which took a bit of nerve. Although I'm not entirely satisfied with the work, I'm posting it anyway —I'm determined to gain some proficiency at this, and chronicling my successes and failures will hopefully push me a bit harder. I'm pretty happy with the head and lower torso, even though I wish I had laid in the color with less scrubbing. The model's shoulder isn't reading quite right, partly because I added a thin dark shadow on the cloth where it rises and overlaps the figure. I also struggled with the light on the breasts and lower ribcage, so the upper torso isn't reading the way i'd like it to.

I'll try again this week, and make some changes to my setup, so I can make better use of my time and materials.

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.

Portrait

I did this color sketch 2 weeks ago —the model was a first-timer. I'm not sure whose idea it was, but she took on a difficult 90-minute standing pose.

My particular view wasn't outstanding, so the full-figure composition was less than stellar. I took another look at it and decided there was something to appreciate in the face. At least one other artist, whose opinion I greatly respect, commented that I effectively captured the intensity of her expression —a combination of nervousness, concentration, and perhaps a bit of pain.

Figure drawing models are deserving of all the respect we can give them.

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.

Watercolor

Three weeks ago I decided to switch media. Not because I was bored with pastel —quite the opposite, as I feel I've barely begun to mine their potential. For years I've been meaning to improve my skill in using watercolor —forcing myself to paint the figure in this challenging medium should help a lot. After two lackluster attempts, I decided to move to a larger sheet of paper and put in lighter washes relying a bit more on my graphite linework. This is the result.



The colors got lighter as they dried (something I'm going to have to get used to.) So I may have to revisit this, giving more attention to the modeling of the hands and softening the bare pate. Darkening the background should help as well.

Standing Male

We're halfway through the spring session, so I thought I'd post some recent images. I did this pastel a few weeks ago, and didn't like it much as I was working on it. After living with it for awhile, I decided it's worth saving.



I like the pose and the angle of the backlit head. I also like the slightly exaggerated nose. The bottom part of the composition got short-shrift, particularly the hands.
I'm thinking of adjusting the color a bit and putting the lower body mostly in shadow to re-emphasize the head as the focal point.

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.