ASL--Russ, in progress

Instead of updating this entire blog today, I'm posting a few photos of 3 different half-made pictures from the last 2 days.

These are all made the same quick-and-dirty way:
1) Mix white + black + yellow ochre --> a medium warm gray. Thin with Turpenoid and doodle in the drawing. Wipe it off with Turpenoid, redraw, wipe, measure, redraw, give up. I really enjoy this first drawing phase.

2) I jump straight to this step because I enjoy it so much: mix up a color to match the face in shadow. It's often a combination of yellow ochre + cadmium red + ultramarine blue. I try and get the value right, but usually I veer too dark. Scrub it in with a dry brush. If all goes well, there should be an interesting shadow pattern at this point.

3) Backgrounds! They're simple, and it's usually a simple matter to match these colors exactly right. Once they're laid down, I can finally see if I'm getting the other, more confusing colors right (relative to the background).
The other great thing about mixing up the background color here is that I can use it to fix the drawing--trim in the head and figure because I'll have made them too wide, concentrate on the negative shapes... I have a big brush for this and it goes so fast.

4) Paint in the blacks and darkest shadows with a dry brush, redrawing and remeasuring against the model as I go.

5) Start mixing up the medium-dark and medium-light colors. GO CRAZY.
I don't know why the midtones are so hard for me, but they really drive me nuts. I always want to jump ahead to the lighter colors, which are fun again.


I'll put up photos of the finished versions later when I bring home the dry paintings. You'll be able to see that they end up looking a lot different than they start out--I have to keep fixing the drawing up until the very end. Please enjoy the very, very unfixed versions below.

Meet Russ the Cirque du Soleil acrobat. He does the trampoline board. This is his first art modeling job.
this is on canvas paper, 16x20


this one is on panel, which is a smooth, non-absorbent surface. You can see how the paint goes on a lot more streaky here than on canvas.


This is a little start on 8x10 loose cotton canvas taped into a pad.

This last photo shows where I stopped in the studio today.