Self-Portraiture

It's about time for me to do my annual self-portrait painting. It was something I decided to do last year, when I painted my self-portrait digitally. Lots has changed over the course of this past year. But right now I'm trying to decide on which media I want to work in.

I'm also working on putting my portfolio together for college 'cos dammit, I want my BFA. So I want to do something that I could include in a portfolio -- I'm thinking of working traditionally.

It's been a very long while since I've painted my self-portrait. I still do self-portrait drawings, 30 minutes, no erasing. It's something I picked up from Evil Professor Rex, and I actually really enjoy it. It was something he had us do for homework in his life drawing class, and it's also something that he critiqued us very strictly on. He critiqued us on likeness as well as technique -- his background is very academic, artistically speaking, so he wanted us to draw as objectively as possible.

I'll admit, I was afraid of doing my self-portrait before I took his class. There's something about it that's fraught with issues, especially if you identify as an artist. Like many women, I have issues with the way I look, but after looking at myself in the mirror once or twice a week to translate what I see onto paper, I've discovered I'm okay with the way I look now. And when you identify yourself as an artist, there's also that whole set of baggage that comes along where not only do you have to draw yourself, you have to do it WELL because you're an artist, not a five year-old with a box of crayons. No pressure.

So here's a progression of my self-portraits, starting from my time in Rex's class to the ones I do now on my own. I'm only including the ones I think are better, because it's my blog and I get to curate things here, but these are the ones I'm happy with. Later I'll put up some of the self-portraits I did in his painting class, which was a whole new kettle of fish entirely.

Yes, you're going to see my construction lines. Like I said earlier, we weren't allowed to erase. I never understood some of the students who did surreptitiously erase -- missing the point entirely. It's good training to (1) put your initial marks down lightly, which is something I think I'll always need to work on, but also (2) it trains you to choose where you put your marks down, 'cos once it's down, it's down. It's worse when you work in pen, which Rex would have us do sometimes -- but I like working in pen because you can't erase. You have to put your marks down with confidence, or they suck.

For the most part, these were done in thirty minutes, no erasing, in pencil. The very first one, August '09, was the very first one done for Rex's class, and it's done across two pages of sketchbook, which was something I did a lot of at the time. The one next to it, September '09 was actually 45 minutes, and we were permitted to erase, which made me all kinds of happy! The very last one, dated September '11 was done in black Prismacolor Verithin, which I really enjoyed working with.

You're not seeing the ones where the proportions are uber-squirrelly, or the ones where the technique was really bad, or the ones that were really unflattering . . . well you get the idea.

So right now I'm doing the self-portrait drawings more often as a warm-up for the self-portrait painting. I haven't decided whether to post a WIP of it; but when it's done I'll definitely post it online.

Convalidation and Sketching

I've gotten out of the habit of carrying my sketchbook around everywhere and using it, so when I had to go to a Convalidation class yesterday with the husband, well -- it was a very long class!

As a side note, if they took all the religious stuff out of it, it would be a very good class for incipient bridal couples (talking about the importance of communication and understanding; realizing how much one's family influences a person and how they act in a marriage; how to fight fairly and repair any hurts that occur over the course of a relationship -- no, not physical fights or hurts! Anyway, everyone knows I don't fight fairly!) because not only does it teach valuable life skills on living the married life, it also is a test of devotion. If you're willing to attend something like this with your spouse-to-be for eight hours, then you'll have a better understanding of what marriage is all about as well as proof of your devotion to your beloved. Since this particular class was for married people (my husband returned to the Catholic Church), he so totally owes me ice cream for doing this.

Anyway, here's a few sketches from that class. And yes, I was paying attention while I was doing this.

The Five Stages of Pot Roast Grief

So, because of all this rutting ice and snow and lack of infrastructure-that-deals-with-ice-and-snow, my sleep schedule has gotten all kinds of wonky, and as a result, I slept beatifically for ten hours yesterday (yesterday, not yesternight), and as a result, my poor pot roast died a horrible death.  No one can hear you scream in the Crockpot.

As I sullenly drank my coffee and sulked, I realized that I was working through the five stages of grief.

For a fricking pot roast.  And I present them here for you:

Denial:  No, no, NO, my pot roast isn't dry!  It isn't a hockey puck, it just needs some . . . moisture.

Anger:  Dammit!  How the hell could this have happened?!  Why the hell does no one else in this house have the sense the gods gave a frickin' weevil to know when the frickin' roast is *done*?

Bargaining:  Okay, maybe if I sacrifice somebody's firstborn to Hestia, she'll salvage my pot roast!

Depression:  My pot roast is RUUUIIIIIINNNNNNEDDDD!!!  Why the hell do I even TRY?!

Acceptance:  Okay, pizza rolls sound great.

Okay, to be honest, I didn't try bargaining with Hestia, 'cos I don't think she rolls that way.  But I did try to find ways to salvage the pot roast. 

Meanwhile, for art therapy, I did this for Day Four of thing-a-day:

Forty-five minutes in Autodesk Sketchbook Express, reference from the Livemodel Companion CD.

And those pizza rolls were pretty darned good.

First Thing-a-Day, Ringy-Dingy

So, my first thingy for thing-a-day is up and posted. 

 

Reference courtesy characterdesigns.com. (nudity warning)

There's so much wonderful stuff to see, I can't imagine being able to see all of it.  I think there's over five hundred people signed up for it?  That's like a small village.  And the kind of talent pool available -- I actually wonder if we'd make a viable, real-life village.  I wonder what it would be like to live there.  So long as I didn't have to build my own home -- I'm rubbish at carpentry.

Anyway, I had some fits getting this sketch done.  Couple false starts. Then I relaxed 'cos it's supposed to be fun, and it worked out at that point.  Forty-five minutes in mypaint while listening to a selection of songs from musicals.

SuperDanny!

So.  They've got a new Superman in the works, and a new actor to play the Man of Steel.  Didn't the last Superman movie come out just a few years ago?

Anyway, got to talking with the husband about Superman actors, and he suggested a couple that I thought could be interesting. 

Danny Devito.  I think that would be awesome.  I like Danny Devito.  And they should cast Rhea Perlman as Lois Lane.

Oh gawd.  That would so kick butt.

I even did up a little quick sketch in Autodesk Sketchbook Express with Devito wearing the cape.  Please excuse the uber-crappy quality; I did it in ten minutes.  Very sketchy quality, no thought to composition or color theory, just a quick, quick scrawl to get the idea down.

Then the husband suggested another actor:  John Cleese.

I'd pay twice the going movie ticket prices to see that.

Sorry, Mr. Devito.  We still love you though.

Learning Curves and the Like

I'm currently puttering around on posterous.com in preparation for thing-a-day and right now I'm trying to set things so that they publish to my blog simultaneously.  After all, why go to the trouble of logging into two sites, and futzing with arranging the elements of one's post twice when I can just go whap!pow!zam! and get it all done once?

 

Oh, and abusing colors?  Never gets old.  Until, of course, it does.

 

Meanwhile, this is what I'm up to:

 

 

(reference photo courtesy of atistatplay and can be found here.)

 

I thought I'd revisit this particular piece since it was done over three years ago.  I certainly hope I got better!  This sketch was done in Autodesk Sketchbook Express, which was part of the bundle of software that I got along with my new Intuos.  I'm not quite sure where I'm going to go with this; most likely I'll continue to develop it into a digital painting (probably in the GIMP).

 

One more week to thing-a-day, and I haven't a thing to wear!

 

All I Want for Xmas --

My husband is a mean ol' man. I adore him. And I'd rather draw him a thousand thousand times than keep his photo in my wallet. He's a patient model, and very game for anything.

And did I mention he's a mean ol' man?

He came home from work on the 23rd with a bag from Best Buy which he put under the tree, after informing me that it was for me. I was a little surprised, simply because earlier in the month he'd asked me what I wanted for Xmas, and I told him. As far as I know, downloadable audiobooks don't come in Best Buy bags. I looked askance at the package.

"What is it?" I asked.

He smiled at me brightly. "It's a present!" he replied in a chipper tone designed solely to annoy.

No matter how much wheedling, whining, whinging, asking, prodding, needling, pouting or otherwise making a pest of myself, he remained stalwart and refused to answer my question.

Though he did offer to let me peek. But really, where's the fun in that?

So, I waited (im)patiently, until the husband came home from Midnight Mass, at which time I was permitted to (finally!) open up my gift, which was way cooler than what I got him.

The marvelous bastard got me a Wacom Intuos 4.

Dear Barnes and Noble:

I understand that when I place an order and check on the free shipping thingy that you'll hang on to my order until it's complete.  It's a fact of mail order that I know well.  I can be patient and accept this.  But why must you hold my entire order until the day my pre-order comes in, and then proceed to ship the pre-order separately from the rest of the in-stock items?  You're very silly. 

So far, I have received Donato's very pretty picture book, Stephanie Law's gorgeous instructional book and Jim Butcher's latest oeuvre.  They all arrived yesterday in great condition.  But really, my time could have been better spent in poring over them lovingly these past three weeks while I eagerly await Jim Gurney's Color and Light.

I think it very shameless that you should tease and taunt a poor bibliovore like me.

Yours sincerely,

Pat

Improvement

Just to show how far I've come since May of '09:

(stock courtesy mizzd-stock)

When I did this piece, it was the best thing I'd done to date digitally.  This was done in OpenCanvas 1.1 with a graphics tablet.  I didn't know how to floodfill the canvas in OC, so in order to introduce tone to the canvas I had to ruddy well paint it in.  I did this in a single layer, in one hour.  Even then I was aware that the likeness simply wasn't there, but I was quite happy with it.  It looked sorta-kinda-almost realistic.  Yay me.

Recently I discovered OC's ability to create event files of the paintings one creates in it, so I went back through and watched myself paint.  When I came to this piece though, I was horrified by how bad the initial drawing was.  Was I --?  Did I --?  Eek.

I'd forgotten how that drawing looked since it had gotten painted over in the process.  Compare to the drawing of my recent self-portrait:

Granted, painting the self-portrait took several hours, and as a result, it's a great deal more polished -- but my drawing technique's improved quite a bit. Even now, with my hour-long (not quite) daily sessions of painting, my drawings have more information; are less . . . slapdash.

Thank you, Evil Professor Rex.

(note to self:  must draw a portrait of Evil Professor Rex as the supervillain he is.)

Fall Self Portrait, Complete

After several hours with the GIMP  I've finally finished my self-portrait. It took more than four hours, but less than six, I think, for the color stage. So, all in all, I think it might have taken somewhere between seven and ten hours. Not all at once -- there's a lot of getting up and walking away involved.

Of course, now that I've slaved over it, I suddenly feel the desire to become an abstract expressionist.

Self Portrait, Fall 2010

Self-portrait, about three to four hours on OpenCanvas 1.1 and a Wacom tablet. Digitally painting a grisaille with the intention of digitally glazing later. I did this looking in a mirror instead of working from a photo. The process was a great deal less grueling than working with oils, but I don't think I could have done it without that prior traditional experience. Thank you, Evil Professor Rex, for your strict instruction and insistence on drawing our self-portraits for homework.

I'm not entirely comfortable letting an image of myself float about in the ether, which I guess means that I did a passable job on likeness.  I was just disappointed that I didn't look more like Tia Carrere.

Life Drawing II

Quick post to show off a little of what I've been up to. Warning -- nudity abounds!




Pencil and white chalk on brown paper, from life.

I later scanned this in and futzed with it to make a line drawing that I could transfer onto my silverpoint surface.

Oh, and the writing on the back -- "This space intentionally left blank" -- was for the prof's benefit, as he was reminding us to consider the backgrounds of our compositions.

It's a wonder I haven't been slapped with an F for life!

The actual silverpoint piece isn't finished, but I'll try to get a progress shot posted soon.  Pinkyswear.

Summer School

I'm currently in Life Drawing II this summer. On a lot of levels, I'm rather surprised at how unstressful it's been. I've been in classes all summer, from Maymester to Summer II, and everything's been so stressful. Interestingly, I'm taking two classes during Summer II, and my life-drawing class, four hours a day, four days a week, is so. Incredibly. Unstressful. Dare I say, nigh relaxing.

Evil Professor Rex is making the drawing II students go the extra mile, experiment with materials, and so on, so this week and next week, I'm working in silverpoint. It's something I've been wanting to do for quite awhile, so I'm incredibly happy to have the opportunity to work in this medium. On prepared paper. Utilizing rabbitskin glue. Which stinks. But hey, pretty, pretty surface to draw on. I kinda don't want to draw on anything else now.

I'll post what I've done when I have a bit more *snort* time.

Reappearing on the Face of the Planet

School sucked out my soul, chewed it up, and spit out the gristle. So now I have gristle for a soul.

Year in recap: school, school, school, more school, life drawing, school, school, and a bit more school, life painting, school, school, schule, more life drawing and school.

And let's not forget the school.

Also, in a great abuse of irony, I promise to post more art here in my copious free time.

I see that my last post talked about the 9X12 show -- I missed last year's show, but I have plenty of time to consider this year's show. Of course, I have nothing that will fit neatly into a 9X12 envelope, but that's what copious free time is for. Or so I'm told.

I wonder if the ancient Greeks had myths about free time, copious or un.

Decisions, Decisions

Art is really about the decision-making process. It's amazing how many different ways a piece can go and still work, but what a finished piece communicates can be so varied, so disparate, depending on the decisions one makes during the process.





SWAK
Graphite on Bristol Board
November 2008
Source photograph courtesy of the lovely Kerianne.


The decisions I made concerning this piece are as follows:

*I needed some pieces for the 9X12 Works on Paper show coming up. So the choice of ground was pretty much well-decided since everything for that show either had to be on paper or made of paper. At this point it was just a question of which paper. I chose Bristol Board because it's sturdy, it was white (I have drawing paper, but it's a creamy-white, and I was planning on this being a graphite piece, which is another decision right there), the vellum surface wasn't too textured for my pencil work, and most importantly, it was what I had available right here. Funny how that works out.

*I wanted a large margin of white surrounding the finished drawing to act as an ersatz "mat". None of the pieces in the 9X12 show are to be matted and/or framed -- they just have to fit in a 9X12 envelope. There's a LOT of work hanging in the show, so having a good-sized border around the image would help to draw attention to it by giving it a bit of visual "space". It's very easy to go into sensory overload at the show, especially since everything is hung very close together. This, of course, gave me a size limitation which leads to my next decision --

*I really, really dislike the thought of folding up my artwork to stuff it into an envelope, so naturally, the piece was going to fit onto a 9X12 piece of paper, minus a generous border, which meant that 8X10 was out, as it would not give me the space I desired. I also wanted it to kind of be a more standard-ish size for ease in subsequent matting and framing. I chose 5X7, almost arbitrarily but not quite: I have a 5X7 template from some scrap Bristol. Having these templates to draw around makes it very easy to figure out where the edges of your piece are supposed to go, and I highly recommend them.

*Given the limitations already decided upon (small size, graphite drawing), I decided I wanted a more intimate piece. I personally believe that drawings tend to be a bit more intimate than paintings, especially smaller pieces. When I saw the original source photo I ended up using as a reference for this piece, I knew I had to draw it, and this provided the opportunity. Given the small size, I had also knew I had to crop in quite a bit, so I knew I'd be homing in on the incipient kiss. The source photo has a beautiful sense of emotion to it that I hoped to distill a bit by narrowing the focus to where one almost couldn't see the faces. I kind of wanted a sense of facelessness overall, just capturing the very lowermost portions of their faces, but I couldn't get a good crop that would exclude the boy's eye, keep the girl's nose, and maintain that gorgeous negative space between the two. In retrospect, I could probably knock off about an inch from the top and the right side for an even tighter crop, but what's done is done. Although I still have an eraser . . .

*And a very quick, tiny sketch, approximately 2" tall and 3" wide. Not very proportional to the final piece, but it showed me the approximate placement where I wanted everything to go. Emphasis on "approximate".





*I decided to lightly cover the picture plane with a light layer of smudged graphite so that I could work up to the lights (by erasing) and down to the darks. Interestingly, a large section of the girl's shoulder shows this layer, illustrating how much I did have to go either way to get the lights and darks.

*I really liked the soft, lost edges occuring at the boy's chin as it recedes into darkness, so I definitely worked to emphasize that.

*The last decision actually came as something of a surprise to me: originally, I just wanted to have a dark section of negative space between the two faces. That's it, just a dark shape against which their features would pop out. But as I worked on it, I considered having a couple/few spots that were slightly lighter, to indicate a fall of hair. I waffled back and forth on it while I worked, and finally decided to go ahead and do it. Now, honestly, I think it could have worked either way, but when I did it, DAMN! It really made the whole piece fall into place, giving it a great deal more intimacy than it originally had, so I'm glad I did it.

*Title: I really have a preference for either short, one-word titles, or very, very long, almost-complex sentence titles. I wanted something succinct, since this is a small piece, and perhaps indicative of the sense of closeness, of the incipient contact about to occur. Unfortunately, the best I could do was "SWAK" (translation: Sealed With A Kiss). Either that or "Ohhhh, What's THAT Taste Like?", which is a line from the film Drop-Dead Fred, and I really didn't think it would communicate quite what I wanted. (Although, if it had been up to my husband, he of the dignified look and puerile sense of humor . . . let's just say that there's a reason why I no longer ask him for help with titles.)

All in all, it was a pleasant road to travel down, and the results please me. Would that all my decisions were this easily made!

Welsh Police Helmet

I've been a little busy recently, but here's something that I've just finished for the upcoming 9x12 Works on Paper Show.




Derwent Drawing Pencils on black Strathmore Charcoal Paper.

It's part of my husband's hat collection. The man takes up more closet space than I do. Er, that is, he would take up more closet space than I do if I had closet space.

If someone asked me five years ago whether I enjoyed drawing and painting still lifes (still lives? which is it?), I'd probably glare daggers at them. But then, up until a few years ago, I'd never done a still life.

I think it's the whole working from life thing. I like working from life, and prefer it far more than working from a photo.

Now if only someone could convince Ewan McGregor to come over and model for me. I far prefer the figure over still life, any day.

(Well, Mister McGregor? Are you ready to pose a la odalisque and flash me that incandescent smile?)

Ducks, Water, and Pixels

I've been working sporadically on this these past few days. But I've been experimenting with other painting styles and techniques, so I swear I haven't been just goofing off!



I wanted to try some other techniques and tutorials, and obviously wouldn't be able to do them on a piece that's already in progress! I'm so impatient sometimes.

I found it very interesting that I paint very differently digitally than when I'm painting traditionally (whether oils or acrylics). But on some levels, I really feel like I'm taking to it like a duck to water. Okay, I may not be swimming pretty like a water ballerina, but at least I'm dog paddling! I've always struggled with painting, it doesn't come as easily to me as drawing does. So I'm quite (pleasantly!) surprised by my initial forays into digital painting.

Sadly, I've been kinda neglecting my sketchbook lately. I guess I really need to work on that. And maybe a few things for the upcoming 9X12 Show.

My computer is a wicked, wanton strumpet. Or maybe I am.

A Few More Hour's Work

And more progress on the digital portrait.

Here's after about a couple more hours' work -- I thought I'd show it with and without the sketch side by side for easier comparison. Having the sketch on top really showed me that I needed more darks. I've been trying not to be so hesitant with this portrait -- hence all the crazy colors, I guess.




And after a couple more hours of work, I've pretty much dispensed with the sketch -- it was covering more than helping. I'm still bringing it up, but less and less as work continues. I've also blocked in something remotely resembling the final background:





I'm hoping to be finished with it in a couple more days. If it doesn't finish me first.

Nah, I'm having fun.

Digital Painting! Mothers, lock up your computers!

Just to show I'm not being a complete bum: I've been playing around with the GIMP for digital painting, and have a couple progress shots of what I'm doing so far.

Without sketch:





With sketch (as a multiply layer overtop):





Trust me, they're less rubbishy than the oil paintings I've been doing lately. This is after about two and a half, or maybe three hours? I'm not sure, I haven't exactly kept track.

Just to prove I haven't just been sitting around baking cookies.

Ooh, cookies.

Um, gotta go.

More Drapery

From drapery week. Graphite on sketch paper. I spent an hour and a half on it before I started to lose the light.