This is the beginning of a block-in for a portrait that I'm finally doing in my own studio. I'm about three hours in at this point. I've got everything setup exactly how I wanted it so I'm a happy camper. I have the B&H lighting setup that was recommended to me by Doug Flynt suspended on a hook about twenty feet in the air at the peek of my converted garage studio. I have it back far enough that there's enough light on my easel and that it's the same light that's on the model. That helps a lot with matching the color notes and values. I have my 24 year old daughter working to the right of me on her own drawing, which is looking pretty good (damn her!). Ever since I decided to hire this model my brain has been flooded with these Gerome like images. I made dozens of imaginary sketches but nothing was really clicking. Then I picked up this four foot wine bottle at an auction and something clicked. I made a turban for the model, set up my home made model stand, and we were off and running. I'm going to take my time to get the drawing as close to perfect as I can. I've been trying Scott Waddells technique of knocking back the drawing with an eraser to get a semi fresh start and it's been working pretty good. The only bad thing is I'm going to blow a fuse having to wait until next saturday to get back into it.
Here's the poster and ebauche for "Ericka as The Wine Seller" 16"x20". The poster photo came out a little glossy because the paint was still wet, but I guess it gives the general idea of what I try to go for in the study. Mainly I want to be able to quickly think of the color scheme as a whole entity and the 5"x7" size allows me to make rapid decisions. I find that this kind of color "gesture" for want of a better term, if done correctly, will carry over into the final piece. On the ebauche (thinned down color layer), I'm painting it in fairly broadly, I don't want to eat the icing before theres a cake. I've been thinking a lot lately about the approach used by the angel academy and I like the idea of a first painting where there's less pressure to nail down all of the detail. I prefer to keep the first layer kind of soupy however because when I start to paint the finishing pass I like some tooth and I like some of the pale underpainting to glow through the top layer.
Here's the completed block-in and underpainting for "The Wine Seller" 16"x20". I'm pretty happy with the way the composition turned out. I've been sketching the arrangement from my imagination for weeks before actually setting the pose and usually there's a big gap between what you imagine and reality, but this one's pretty close. As I was inking the wipeout I was thinking that I was making it too dark, but then when I put the paint on I was having trouble seeing my lines and I started to freak out a little bit, but I stayed calm and eventually the drawing began to emerge. Whew! I've included a lot of fun things to paint when the model's not here so this one should keep me busy for a while.
