Two Casts

I'm just about done with the Lion cast painting (11"x14", oil on linen). Nick at Grand Central Academy of Art has done a good job of keeping me focused on the direction of the light. The base of the cast is unpainted and somewhat darker in tonality and of a warmer color than the plaster body. It almost looks like cement, so I added burnt umber to my pre-mixed grays to capture the effect. I think it'll make a nice segue into the reddish brown of the table top. This is to be my last cast painting at GCA, i'm moving on to portrait or figure, I haven't decided which yet.

For "Yellow Rose and Cast" (8"x10", oil on linen), I'm not using my tubed grays. As this is not really a cast painting exercise but more of a still life I'm looking for more variations in temperature and chroma.

"Moth" Blocked In

I blocked in the drawing for "Moth" to a small 9" by 12" canvas. Some artists like to do a very detailed wipe-out, almost like a thinned down grisaille. I prefer to keep things basic at this stage. I do the wipeout by covering the whole canvas with umber and black and then wiping out the ligjhts with a paper towel. I'm looking forward to starting work on the figure, hopefully this Sunday morning. My plan is to go for broke and paint each area to a finish, wet-in-wet from top to bottom. I was inspired to try a small figure painting when my instructor, Nick Hiltner, brought in two small figure paintings that he had done. Both featured a single figure before a kind of rocky landscape, inspired by his Catskill studies, with a twilight or moonlit scene. They were really little jewels with subtle modeling and totally got me going to try some figure paintings of my own. I'm sure I'm in over my head, but what the hey, it's only paint and canvas.

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.