Portraits - Eleven/Twelve: #6 Grand Inquisitor? Star Trek?

This is the last one!
We're back to my least favorite thing, 'lighting from below,' but this time there's a spooky red filter over the lamp. Our teacher gave us a big hint--the red parts will look like they're reflecting red light only if all the rest of the painting is made darker. So we just adjusted all the other paint colors down a few steps darker from real life. This is the first time he made us paint something different from what we could actually see. Pretending it's a little bit darker isn't that hard, but it felt like an uphill jog. My brain is even more out-of-shape than the rest of me.

Portraits - Nine/Ten: #5

We were required to include the hands this time, and the background got a little crazier (child's patterned bedsheet--those are toy cars). Also he never put his hand back in the same place twice. Too bad I can't blame the tiny weird ear problem on him. I didn't notice what was going on up there until we were leaving.

Portraits - Eight: #4 greenie queenie

Portraits - Seven: #4 wk 1

I'm not sure if I have a photo from day 1 of this painting. If I knew where one was, I wouldn't try to substitute yet another "word-picture." Enjoy! This is the best blog!
The model is a short, roundish middle-aged woman with long, thin hair and glasses. She is my favorite model so far because she holds herself very still and resumes the exact same position after her breaks. She had been asked to come up with a theatrical or dramatic pose, so she brought a cane along--she took her seat as if it were a throne, and rested her hands on the cane as though it were a scepter, and she did a Queen Victoria moue thing with her mouth.

Drawing - Six:

Drawing NYC - Four:

Portraits - Six: Third One

This is Week 2 for the painting described below (last wk).

I forgot to write down her name. It doesn't really look like her anyway.

Drawing - Five:

Drawing NYC - Three:

Portraits - Five: "warm underpainting" homework + starting portrait 3

I think I took a snapshot of this, maybe on my phone. So photo TK, maybe. I don't know where I put the homework. Some blog, huh?

Here's what you missed so far: the model is seated on a platform slightly above us. She is pretty. She is lit from below. It is already too hard and I want to stop and go home. She has a prominent nose and chin, so they cast shadows upward on her face. I should've pushed the Toulouse-Lautrec-ishness, but I'm more at the slavish copying-stage of my artistic development, and I let the competing fluorescent lighting on my side of the room cancel out most of those shadows and sap out the drama. That's also what the bright white reflections around her cheekbone are supposed to be about. No, those aren't whiskers, they're what remain of the dramatic footlights! Same thing with the uni-brow. See you next wk.

Drawing - Four:

Drawing NYC: No Class

Happy Columbus Day!

Portraits: No Class

Yom Kippur!

Drawing - Three:

Drawing NYC - Two: Cancelled!!

I waited at Grand Central for a little while, then I went home.

Portraits - Four: Painting #2 "Rich"

I learned the model's name this time.
His hair is actually black and his lips are very red, but I'm not slick enough to handle all that without making it look like eyebrow liner and lipstick. I wiped it off and made everything light brownish. Cop out.

I spent most of my painting time on the nose and eyes--I didn't get back to finishing a lot of what I'd hoped to do, but the nose really needed the work. Our nose painting homework from last week helped a lot, but I still had trouble figuring out what I was seeing from 20 ft away. At the end of the night, my teacher walked by and said, "there's a dark red line running here 1/4 inch along the inside line of the nose--can you see it?" He scumbled it in for me, and then said, "and there's a light blue line just to the left of the red, along the edge of the nose, and to the other side of the red line, there are about 6 shades of flesh that make the curve of the bridge down to the cheek. Can't you see them on the model?" I stared and stared and stared and I couldn't see anything like he was describing, but then between one blink and the next--I'm either the most suggestible person in the world, or I had been the most oblivious--the colors on his nose transformed into a light blue line edge, followed by a dark red line that hadn't been there a second ago, and then the various light oranges and pinks. Weird. So that's how you paint a nose.

Drawing: No Class

Still Rosh Hashanah, so no drawing class. Shanah Tovah!

Drawing NYC: No Class

happy Rosh Hashanah

Portraits - Three: new 2wk painting; my nose

Our homework for the week was to paint our noses at 2x life size, looking slightly from the side and underneath. I learned more about the colors and shapes of my nose than I wanted to. The painting needs more darks--I don't know why it's still so hard for me to see those. I thought I was really exaggerating both the high chroma on the bridge and the darkness of the reds, but no. (4x5):

[photo tk]

Our new model is called Rich and he holds his head very still. That is very good news for me--drawing is hard enough already when just I'm trying to copy what I see.

The best thing I did tonight was the 10 minute under-painted sketch in dark brown oil+turpentine. It looked like him! I have no photographic evidence.

The work went a lot faster this week. I got some version of all his features on the canvas and then spent the last hour working on all the colors in his cheek.

It's getting easier to mix the colors I want so I'm able to spend more time painting, less time mixing and remixing. I finally figured out some uncomplicated 'recipes' for skin tones and I've been able to cut down my working palette to just 15 tubes of paint.
What I learned:
1. Get real cadmium red, not cad red hue, because that's the only way you'll get juicy red-orange for noses and cheeks.
2. I'm using some old cad yellow hue for now, but for mixing oranges, it works much better than my other yellows with prettier-sounding names.
3. Yellow ocher + white + whatever else is on the palette makes a good enough yellowy, ivory light skin tone.
4. Make warm and cool pinks and light flesh colors by adding white to couple of earth reds--I'm screwing around with Indian Red for cooler pinks and Terra Rosa for the warmer. I'm trying Venetian Red too. What a blessed relief to arrive in the general ballpark after 15 seconds of mixing instead of 15 minutes. Is this why my teacher didn't give us instructions on using specific pigments on our palettes? So that it would feel like a miracle when we finally figured things out for ourselves? It worked on me. I'm very very very grateful to these colors every time I mix paint now.

Drawing - Two: Collage

The conceit of this exercise is that it's an aerial landscape viewed from 1000 feet above. We're supposed to ignore fussy details in favor of composition/patterning. Not that I really understand what's going on!

We took one of our own keys and drew it, rotated the paper one turn and drew the key again, rotated the paper another turn and redrew the key, and so on.

Then we glued on junk and colored it! It's art, yo.

My teacher gathers detritus from the streets every single day. Every day. He says he has about 500 baggies full right now. Like whoa. And wow. He uses the storage baggie size and stuffs in all the day's treasures. He told me that he has zero personal interaction with anybody on the streets because his eyes are constantly scanning the ground. Lucky me. The stuff that was in my bag was SO GOOD. I flipped for that card tag with the string attached and had a "my precious, precious" moment. When he saw what I'd grabbed up, my teacher said that when he first saw the tag on the ground, he nearly had a stroke. That is the appropriate response.

Here are some of the baggie's contents scattered around me while I'm deciding what to glue on.

Drawing NYC - One: Chelsea Market

Some tourists from California told me what they thought I should draw, so I complied. Good thing, too, because they came back later to make sure I was drawing what they said I should.

I asked them why they were tourist-ing--'touring' doesn't feel right either--through Chelsea Market of all places and they said they saw it mentioned on the Food Channel. Maybe the Food Channel should be more responsible abt where they're steering hapless tourists? And they didn't realize that the Food Channel studios were located at the end of this hallway--score. Right? Rachel?

Everyone talked to me tonight. Eight people? Holding a blank sketchboard is like walking a dog--immediately all of New York is your talking buddy.

I HAVE A SERIOUS PROBLEM CONTROLLING THE VEERING 'STRAIGHT' LINE!

Look at anything I've drawn that has a floor, a straight wall, or any attempt at perspective. I always bend away.
It's not like I'm just realizing this just now, but I've never been more annoyed about it. I thought it would work itself out as I got more motor control, but, if anything, it's getting worse. What makes it even dumber is that in every drawing, I'm actually trying to be tidier and to draw straighter lines. This is me trying! And watching, and deliberating. And thinking, "this drawing is a mess, but at least I totally nailed that one straight line in that one segment of the wall!" That's the easy part of drawing that I think I can do. It's not until 20 mins after I'm finished that I realize, "oh no the floor is curling/the wall creeping/the post doesn't line up with itself."

I think that this is one of my problems: I have trouble seeing the drawing as an entity apart from whatever I'm drawing. I'm thinking, "is this what I'm seeing?" instead of "does this picture look cool and are the big lines all squared and straight?" I think I'm stopping to look at the whole picture-in-progress, but I'm not--I'm still seeing the separate segments and then glancing up to check them against life. Segments of it, actually, because I can't see the big picture out of the corner of my eyes, and I'm shifting to take it in. That's the main problem--I, like everybody, move my head when I look at the world. It's the same viewing pattern as for the page--I look at in pieces of the setting around me and focus on the parts until I can assemble some mental patchwork event for what I think I'm seeing. When I start to scan things further from or closer to me, I shift my head, maybe turn my shoulders, and--oops I just shifted the perspective lines again and don't realize it. But it's exactly what I see! Kind of. If you add 'time' to space. But the spatial relationships I'm paying attention to for measurements and proportions actually do match up! And for the dumbest reason! Because, unlike a camera, my version of the seeing involves stupidly torquing myself around to better see whatever's around. Good effort measuring and double-checking, but you forgot something. Surprise, I drew another torqued roof lifting off.

If I were doing this on purpose, I'd say that I'm drawing a montage of sequential moments. It's filmic! Too bad it's not on purpose. And, despite my multi-paragraph apologia for bent lines, I'd still rather be able to draw a straight line, and I'm noticing that nobody else seems to have this problem, so everybody else handles the situation fine.

Am I going to have to carry around a straight edge? [but that would be cumbersome, although, yes, I'm already hauling around the giant sketchboard and the bag of pencils and charcoal and a few extra books to read in case I get trapped somewhere...]
Or would it make more sense to get an iPhone for the camera and take a few seconds now and then to compare the progression of my drawing against my iPhotos and, when nec., deploy the side of the iPhone as a straight edge

Also: we are supposed to always draw a frame around the page before we start drawing, and I can't draw those straight either. It looks like I do them with my eyes closed, but I give my best effort to not wobble. How do sign painters do it?! Can this be learned?

Second drawing, 20 mins, looking the other direction.
The two security guards along the back wall are 10 feet tall because I started drawing from their heads down, and when I finished, they were floating. Unfortunately, I'd already drawn in the floor. I had to stretch them into giants so that their feet would touch ground. If it mattered more, I'd erase them completely. I don't like them. I prefer the guy on the far left drinking a juicebox.

My favorite part in both drawings is the unsullied white space.

Sighted! Non-celebrity NY1 anchor Lewis Dodley, leaving elevator! This is one of the finest sightings evurr, inclu Gossip Girl Jenny this summer. I love NY1. If it were Pat K, I might've made a pest of myself to thank him. For the news.


Love those shiny industrial floors. They make me want to move in. Is there anything more appealing than sealed concrete? I esp like the old lumber and the cracks showing through.

Portraits - Two: First Painting

I spent most of my time in front of the model mixing paints, not painting. It's hard to get the knack! I was mixing, like, 12 colors each time trying to get a basic usable orange or pink. Obviously I'm doing it wrong.

Drawing - One: Continuous Line Portraits, Redux

I did some like these before.

This model had astonishing hair. He's slouching toward me with his hands resting up on the bench. The wonky shapes behind him are easels piled up against the back wall. They look more like crazy apartment building silhouettes, don't they?


Two people from my class. The white tape is where I was too lazy to erase.

Portraits - One: 99 Problems

All my teacher said abt it was, "her neck is too orange." It's too bad that orange is the only color I know how to make.
The part where she looks like a flesh-eating zombie also bothers me a little.
I had huge problems just mixing paint. As you can see. Anyway, I hope next week I'll be able to spend less time mixing and more time painting over this.
I wouldn't normally post a photo of a work-in-progress, but you must admit this is a sad piece of horrible-ness, and I can't stop staring.

I'm watching From G's to Gents as I type this, and thinking: me and the Gs--we're all wayyy out of our depths

Drawing Class - Bonus Track: St. Patrick's Cathedral

Top, top quality camera phone again. I'm starting to like the greenish cast of the phone's pictures--good thing, too, because my the toy camera on my phone is turning into my primary photo supplier. Pathetic laziness.

It takes the very crummiest photos, but I'm using it almost non-stop. The ease outweighs the picture quality, until I look at the pictures. An iPhone would fix so much of my life. I'd settle for a better camera tucked inside my current phone [which I'm still fond of], or a small, light camera that always stayed charged in my bag.

I remember this night was freezing cold, so sharp and empty when you tried to breathe that the night seemed nearly airless. It was the best night for walking through the new year. Finally, a vacant hour and the expectation of a thousand like it! It seemed like the bare atmosphere barred regrets, like the accumulated weight of the past years couldn't chase me here through the dark thin nothing. Forward! Hope! That's the part I love about brutal January, esp at nighttime.

That came out florid and purple-y. I was shooting for technical-sounding. Oh who cares happy new year.

* * *

Two best memories from tonight:
1. There's a deli just north of St Pat's where I bought a grilled cheese sandwich during a break. The man who made it for me said, "It turned out PERFECT!"

2. My teacher said that what he liked about my drawing is it makes you wonder, "Am I in Heaven? or HELL?"
That's funny. Admit it. I thought it was so funny that I've pinned this drawing up on my bedroom wall for a reminder. I didn't even like this drawing before then.