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