First Sketch

This is a little 5"x7" sketch from my imagination that I've been thinking about doing for a few weeks. I'm fascinated by the process that artists had to go through to compete in the Prix de Rome. They would be given a subject and had to come up with thumbnails, sketches and a fully realized color study that if they were chosen would be worked up into a full blown painting using life references. So eventually I would like to follow that process for this painting. The subject is a figure in a dark studio holding up a panel to a window that causes the light to flow in a beam onto a table where a model of a gothic building stands. I'm not sure what it all means, maybe it's about what inspires me, I don't want to figure it out before I've even started to really paint it. My next step will be to construct a box with a little tableau and see what the light might actually do in this kind of setup. Hopefully this summer I'll be able to hire a model and see it happen. That will give me a lot of time to really study the idea. But this little sketch already has my blood going and I guess that's what's supposed to happen.

Croquis, Etude', Ebauche

These images are in reverse of the order that I wanted to post them. Anyways, I thought on this one that I'd try something different, break out of my comfort zone. The small sketch on looseleaf paper is my thumbnail from my imagination. I made quite a few of them, this one is the closest to the final image. Next, while I had a break at work, I made a study using acrylic paint on a canvas panel.(what I have my students use in class). That was also painted from my imagination. The drawing was my attempt to arrange a setup that was pretty close to what I had imagined and then make a life drawing. After making the drawing I realized that the composition worked better with a vertical format so I cropped it and transferred it to an 8"x10" canvas. I did a wipeout using umber and the next day I did an ebauche (the top image). If I'm pleased with the result I will square up the drawing to a larger canvas and set up the still life objects in my studio, so that I can get a little more detail and form. I started painting the fruit and potatoes today and so far so good. The landscape background is a little bit of my backyard and mostly a remembered river scene. My tentative title is "Voyage".

"Moth" Studies

A while ago, I had posted a sketch of an idea I had, inspired by this dark entranceway, lit up by an overhead light, that I would see while walking my dog in the early morning hours. Anyways, I finally got around to it. I have my wife posing in my studio while standing on a platform with a single spot shining down about six feet over her head. This morning I finished the pencil drawing and then I quickly knocked off a poster study, while my wife was still willing to pose. She'll only do it for two hours at a time, once a week, so I have to make the most of it. It's a fairly hard pose and she's been complaining bitterly. She says I owe her big and have to build her a deck in the backyard this summer. How we artists suffer for our art. It's supposed to be a night scene so I may have to go a bit darker and heighten the contrast. Although I'm doing the figure from life, the background is from sketches I made while the image was still fresh in my memory. It's where realism coincides with imagination that's going to be the tough part. It's going to be on a small 11" x 14" canvas so I'll be able to suggest a lot more than I would on a larger piece. The poster is pretty close to what I expected so we'll see what happens when I actually get down to it. The problem with working from memory is that there's a tendency to overdo the details (the bane of illustration). I may have to go over there at four in the morning with my car and do an on the spot poster study. Hope I don't get harassed as a suspicious character.

Seed of an Idea

This is the first initial thumbnail sketch of a figure/landscape painting idea that recently came to me.(sorry for the blurryness, I have extreme camera shake when I don't use a tripod, kind of like buckfever). Every morning when I walk my dog in pitch dark (since the time change) I pass by this elementary school which has this doorway and walkway that is lit by a single overhead lamp that is attached to the wall directly over the doorway. Something about the appearance of it has captivated my imagination. I decided that there's no way that I could paint it directly from life but that this would be a good opportunity to sharpen my skill at memory drawing. As I was working out an initial sketch the idea came to me of having a female figure posed before the darkened doorway, seemingly adjusting her classically styled dress. Why? So that her pose would allow her body to angle upwards and catch some of the light. I plan to work this out using the academic method of making perspective studies and figure studies, drapery studies, etc; . It will probably take me a while because I won't be devoting all my time to it, but this is where it starts and hopefully I'll have the discipline to see it through. I was working on this sketch at my desk while my students were taking a test, so I hurriedly scribbled it down with a ball point pen before the image faded from my imagination. One of my former instructors cautioned me not to get too caught up in one type of painting so this is a little bit of experimenting.