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.

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!

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.

Quick Post with Underpainting

Thought I'd show what I had so far on the underpainting front. The figure is underpainted in purple (dioxazine violet mixed with burnt umber and titanium white). And yes, what you're seeing is the image painted over two canvases, each measuring 20" X 16".

Still got a ways to go.

And a closeup of the face:

I'll post more when I have more progress. Or when the nice men in white coats come and take me to my new studio with padded walls. Wheee!

Cartoon

I've been busy recently trying to get work done for an upcoming show. The good news: I have an upcoming show. The bad news: they won't let me hang nudes.

Now doesn't that sound all kinds of perverted.

So, between schoolwork and house-hunting, I've been frantically stretching canvases, priming canvases, measuring frames, and so on. I much prefer drawing, because I'm a great deal more competent at it. But drawing requires matting and framing in order to be presentable. A painting on canvas needs only to have its sides neatly painted, either in a continuation of its painting, or in a solid color (such as black, or the background color of the painting in question). Right now I can't afford to mat and frame five or six pieces. But with a little effort, I can make my paintings ready to hang.

I do have something to show for my absence -- a full sized cartoon of the painting:




Charcoal and carbon pencil on brown paper, 40" x 16".

I've never really done a full-size cartoon before -- usually I'll have a sketch in my sketchbook, and I'll take it over to the artograph at the school and use that to enlarge the image so I can transfer it to the canvas. This time, though, I wanted to work out the composition at size instead of fiddling around on a smaller area. It's actually pretty liberating: I don't have to fudge on some areas that would be too small on a 5x7 sketchbook. I also know where everything is going. Sometimes, working in the sketchbook, I won't get the proportions of the composition right, so when the image gets enlarged, the composition gets thrown out of whack. What I mean is that I'll scribble a haphazard box to work out my composition in, but the box (picture plane) doesn't have the same proportion as the canvas I end up working on. So, the arrangement of elements I worked out in that box doesn't work well on the canvas.

Closeup of the figure's face.

I'm still working out exactly what I want and where I want it in the composition. I'm anxious to get started on it, but I know if I don't finish the drawing and know where everything is going to be and what direction I'm going in, I'm going to flounder somewhere between 60 and 75 percent of the way through the painting. Happens every time. You folk who work so spontaneously and on the fly -- you're lucky dogs. Nyah.

This is a little scary for me -- I'm still afraid that I'm going to irrevocably screw up and have nothing to show for it. I'd cross my fingers, but it's rather hard to hold a brush that way!

Next time I'll post some of the progress on the painting itself.