Cast Drawings

These are some of the cast drawings that I've completed at the Grand Central Academy of Art's saturday cast drawing class under the instruction of Nick Hiltner. I did a mouth cast about two years ago during the summer intensive but I could tell I wasn't really getting it. Last January I started up again and now after a year part time I'm ready to move onto cast painting. I can't wait. The order of completion was the eye, ear, hand and satyr statue. I didn't get to finish the hand because when I came back from the summer break someone else was using it so I just moved on. I kind of like having one that's half finished as it shows the process.

Kicking out the Jams

Sometimes it feels good to just let your hair down and paint as if theres no tomorrow.I laid the paint on pretty thick on this one and just went for it. The subject kind of lent itself to it, how long can you leave jam on a muffin before mold sets in? It's good practice for the kind of thinking on my feet painting that I have to do when I'm out in the landscape, call it a "stillscape".

Jam and Muffins

A small 8'x10' canvas featuring different flavor jams and some english muffins. Did the line drawing and inking yesterday and the thin colored ebauche today. Sunday I'm going to try and knock this one off in a day with some thick and juicy paint, and a big brush!

Yellow Roses

These could be a little sharper and theres glare on the more finished one, but it gives the general idea. Problem with roses is you have to paint fast because they are changing by the minute and if you need more than one day forget about it. I blasted in the drawing and underpainting on day one and when I went to paint on day two I had to rely on memory as well as looking at the setup because the flowers had completely changed. I think I had nough info in the underpainting to do a pretty good job anyway. Next time, I will buy em and paint em, same day, no delay!

Nancy's Jacket

Well, I guess I'm getting close to being finished on this one. I blasted in the clothing fairly quickly because I knew once my wife got up for a break it would be a whole new set of fold patterns. I oiled out the entire face and then literally set about pinning the ears to the head as I could see they were to light and too "up".I'll probably do one more pass, after spraying with retouch varnish to tie up any loose ends. All in all, I'm fairly happy with the results. I see a lot of problems that will have to be ironed out just through the experience of painting a lot more portraits, which I intend to do. It's a pretty good likeness and I think I've captured the aging face of a fifty year old woman who somehow miraculously manages to still maintain that innocent little girl look that I fell in love with over thirty years ago.(or maybe I'm just projecting). Next portrait I'm going to try out the Zorn palette of black, white, cadmium red light and yellow ochre.

Jug and Lemon Complete

Here's the completed version. I did end up doing some retouching. I glazed over the right side of the background to push it back a little and I went over the front of the wood block to push it down and to cool down the overall tonality. I also went back into the lemon because I felt the light was pushing too far back on it. All in all, I'm digging it.

Nancy's Hair

Worked on the hair and neck today. Theres a little more definition than is showing up in this photo. Also getting a little bit hazy in the areas that need to be oiled out. I'll spray it with re-touch varnish when it's all done. I treated the hair a little more broadly than the rest of the portrait, as I didn't want to get involved in painting each individual hair or clump of hair(although one could certainly do that).

Nancy's Neck

Two hours on this one little section of neck. I feel like my head is going to explode. Then after contemplating it for a while I realized that I had made the neck shadow too dark, so I got a rag and just wiped it off, if my model hadn't taken off I probably would have repainted it today,oh well! Now I'll be going back to work so i won't get back to this for a week. That'll give me a chance to work on some still lifes during the week.

Nancy's Ear

Photoshop is driving me crazy! Each photo has to be handled differently even though it's the same painting. Anyways, really compressing the value range in modeling the ear, keeping in mind that for the most part it's on the same plane as the side of the face. Already I can see some areas that are going to need to be pushed in even a little further. Looking at the drawings of Kate Sammons really helped me to gauge how light I would need to go to match flesh tones in grisaille; she's got a pretty good handle on it.As I start to work more in the shadow areas I'm trying to keep them velvety and mysterious but I'm also looking for pathways of form that will help weave together the neck and the face. Theres a little bit of reflected light under the chin that I pushed way down in value which links up nicely with the light form that passes along the cheek.

Nancy's Mouth

Tricky business getting the mouth to be in sync with the other forms. Usually theres a downturn of light from the cheeks on down, when the light is pointing from above, but in the space that I have to set up I had to put the light on a parellel plane with the model which makes for some real difficult and subtle rolls. Well, the hard part is over for the most part, although when you're painting on the form it's all just form anyway. One isn't necessarily more difficult, it's just different.

Nancy's Nose

Sorry about the blurryness, I'm shooting it while it's on the easel, without a tripod. I'll take a nicely lit shot of it when it's all done. Things seem to be going along pretty smoothly. I'm trying real hard to stitch together all the various tissues looking for places where the light bleeds through from one form to the next. Cheekbone was a little tricky because it has a combination of highlight and form light, both with their own very different set's of logic. Hopefully I haven't overdone it. I can always push it down in the touching up stage (which I'm assiduosly trying to have as little of needed as possible. I'm trying to be a tightrope walker. Tightrope walkers don't get to do touch-ups; either you're on the rope or you're not.