Cherry Blossom Time

This weekend the weather warmed up and the cherry  blossoms were beautiful here in Washington DC.  Here are a few photos of how things look.

The Jefferson Memorial

Cherry Blossoms Over the Tidal Pool

Cherry Tree Sunset

Cherry Trees at the Tidal Pool

Dogwoods

Dogwoods

Spring seems to have hit DC with a bang.

I was at the Maya Lin show at the Corcoran in DC and the cherry blossoms and dogwoods were gorgeous.

Here’s a pic of the dogwoods, I should be at the tidal basin in the next few days to take some pictures of the cherry blossoms.

Robert Liberace Releases DVDs

Artist Robert Liberace will release five  DVDs at the Portrait Society of America’s  The Art of the Portrait, April 23 – 26, 2009 in Washington, DC.  The titles of the DVDs are as follows:

The Figure in Red Chalk

The Figure in Action

The Portrait in Three Color Chalk

Anatomy, Upper Torso

The Figure in Grisaille

Here are two youtube videos. The first video, titled Robert Liberace Gallery, is a wonderful overview of the wide variety of work Robert Liberace creates. The second (titled Quick Draw) shows some of the footage from each of the DVDs.

Recent Acquisition

Demo by Robert Liberace

Okay now that sounds rather hoity-toity, but I was lucky enough to buy this recent demo that Robert Liberace painted for his afternoon class. This painting showed how he painted a nose, lips and eyes of a male model.  Later, once his demos were over he painted a wonderfully delicate portrait of the model as well.

Here is a close-up of the lips Rob painted.  He told me he’d used a very limited palette of raw umber, burnt sienna, titanium white, ultramarine blue and a red; it looks like a bluish red-so perhaps alizarin crimson but I’m not 100% certain.

The pictures I took of the small portrait did not turn out well, I will try again tomorrow and will post the results.

Lip Study by Robert Liberace

Are We Too Tough on Ourselves?

I think I an too critical of my own work.  I know that I’m slowly learning to appreciate where I am at today (skill-wise) and this helps me to see and measure my progress.  Some days I am ok with how I am progressing and other days, not so much.  But at least I am starting to feel comfortable with knowing the direction that I am heading.

What made me think about this are two things that happened in class Friday.

The first thing was a person new to Rob’s class was standing next to me working and she was having a difficult time of it.  Although we were in a drawing class, Rob tailored this one to take us from charcoal to an oil grisaille and I don’t think she’s had much experience painting with oils.  She seemed to be struggling with the medium but her rendering of the form was great.  She did a portrait and asked for some help the last 20 minutes of the class.

I helped her as much as I could.  It was a strange sensation because I could see where she’d properly mapped out her lights and darks but she couldn’t figure out mid-tones.  Considering that she didn’t know how to use oils I thought she did great but all she saw was failure.  It made me wonder if we are just too hard on ourselves?

The second thing was the painting pile.  There is a spot in the general area where students place discarded canvases/boards for recycling (i.e., free for other artists to use).  Last Friday evening someone placed a several pieces  of linen there.  I went over and looked and there were a variety of landscapes -large and small as well as some paintings from the Fall term (I recognized the models and poses).

These paintings were really good.  I would have been pretty happy had I done any of the landscapes let alone some of the figurative work.  I was sad to see this hard work in the discard pile.  I guess they thought their efforts weren’t fit to keep.  They were wonderful.

I wondered if they were just too hard on themselves or if they did not have supportive friends who could give them honest and solid feedback that they could trust?

If you paint and you don’t have someone who can give you this feedback try to find a group of like-minded artist who will provide this type of support.

If you live in an area that is rural or you’ve tried and can’t seem to find anyone virtual isn’t a bad substitute.  There are groups on facebook for most types of genres as well as websites dedicated to a variety of medias (i.e., scribbletalk, wetcanvas,  conceptart, etc).  Try to find one that fits your style of painting but don’t be shy-get out there and meet folks.  Remember to be both supportive but honest in turn and have fun.

Friday the 13th Work

Female Torso Study

This is the painting I work on for the last two sessions of my class with Robert Liberace.  Marjorie gave me the panel, it is some type of wood and I honestly have no idea how she prepped it.  We ended up trading surfaces.  I had a large piece of toned linen but it was pretty unwieldy to maneuver.  I liked the panel although the brush dragged a little as I painted on the panel.

We had this model for three sitting.  For the first one I spend most of the session watching Rob’s demo and only about half of the class drawing.  I wanted to really work on her torso since there seemed to be quite a bit going on (i.e., folds of skin, core shadows cast shadows, reflections).

The model  wasn’t feeling well so for the second evening the pose was changed into something to make her comfortable.  She was reading a book which make things pretty awkward so I decided to not paint it; my interest was in the torso.

I tired painting her several times and kept wiping it out because there were a lot of foreshortening issues with where I was in relation to her pose.  Finally I figured it out and painted the shadows and her downcast head.  I put in a flesh mid-tone that simply did not work.  Usually you don’t want to go light but in this case she is pale so it had to be light.

Sadly I managed to completely kill the subtlety in the area of her abdomen right under her right breast.  I think I will let it dry and see if I can go in an tame some of it to less of a screaming pink (she had this wonderful dark blue transition tone there similar to what you see in a Rubens painting) which flattened everything out.

The last term, I was trying very hard to successfully transition from the grisaille to color.  This study is one step from a grisaille since I used an extremely limited palette  (umber, sienna and white with just a tiny bit of ultramarine blue).

This is a full size image of the thumbnail above.  Again it needs significant work but overall I am happy with the work I’ve finish so far.  I am starting to see that I am making progress and more importantly I can see the problems with the painting in a more positive way.  By that I mean I can see there is a dead spot on the abdomen and I know it needs reworked and toned down, I can see also where addition work needs to be done on the transition area of the upper left arm and the upper lateral chest.  At the same time I don’t feel the need to wipe this down.  I have learned quite a bit from it and I am making small steps.

Limited Palette Study

Friday Night, Final Class

Adam by Robert Liberace

Last night was the last class of the term.  It’s always a little sad to hit our 4-week break; but at the same time it’s nice to have my Friday nights back.  This week Rob painted a wonderful tiny portrait of model.  Because the painting is only about 2-3 inches square, Rob chose to use a very smooth board.  He told us that working in a small scale demands a very smooth surface to allow you to really show subtle details.  He spent about 30 minutes on this demo.

Oil Sketch Study by Robert Liberace

This last term was really challenging for me because of  the format.  Robert started us on charcoal(which I am abysmal at) and then pen and ink studies, watercolor washes over ink and then finally oil grisaille.  It was comprehensive and stretched most of the

Last week Rob painted a gorgeous 30 minute demo on Adams’ legs.  It’s amazing how simple he makes this look.  The painting is a grisaille, using three basic colors, white (I believe he used titanium), raw umber and burnt sienna.

15-20 Minutes into the Demo

Rob started painting on toned linen.  You can see this is a very  simple sketch using raw umber.You can see in this picture that Rob refined both his shapes and shadows and added a strong mid-tone to the model’s upper thigh.

Through out the demo, Robert continued to refine the shadows and make corrections as needed.  Rob tends to paint in lines to describe the human form (some artists use curves, some boxes and some circles).

Rob will deliberately exaggerate an angle (for example the interior calf muscle) to prevent it from becoming too curvy or precious.At 15-twenty minutes into the demo you can see he’s started adding some minor variations into his mid-tones.  And early modeling of the form (strategic placement of lighter and darker mid-tones) has begun. Rob has done very little at this point with melting/merging the light and dark paint.

Below is the completed demo by Robert.

Completed Demo by Robert Liberace

Note I had to repost this, for some reason I seem to have text alignment issues when posting photos from my laptop.

My Friday Night Work (20 Feb)

Adam

These are some pictures of my drawings from 20 February.  I was working in a moleskine sketchbook which works well for pens, pencils and silverpoint but not so much for ink (used as a wash) and watercolor.  Now in fairness this was not the watercolor paper sketchbook which would have worked perfectly.  I used what I had.

Adam is holding onto a staff for additional support, with one hand behind his back.  I usually prefer drawing his back when it’s dramatically lit and that night was no exception.

A two or three minute sketch

The problem with this sketch is that I got way to into the shapes of the shadows and did not correctly draw the dynamic pose.  I gave up on this sketch and started working on just trying to capture what his shoulders were doing in contrast to the angle of his hip.

The sketch on the right is an attempt to just get the angles correct without really worrying about massing things in correctly.

Third sketch of the evening

The next sketch shows where I took that thumbnail.  This is a new sketch and again the emphasis was strictly on capturing the dynamics of Adan’s pose.

I’d like to think I learned something from class that evening.  Part of it was simply trying to work when I felt unable to settle or unwell.  Another bigger lesson was concentrating on capturing the dynamics of a pose vice getting so lost in the shadows.

I like the power in the third image even though I didn’t get to finish it (this was completed in the last 15 minutes of  class).

Friday Demo with Robert Liberace (20 Feb)

Initial sketch with shadow

This last Friday Rob nudged me way out of my comfort zone. He gave a demo using Adam (we have him for 3 more weeks).

Rob used some Twinrocker paper (I think it’s either calligraphy cream or Yale Cream) and showed how different nibs and techniques changed. Rob used a quill pen (it looked like a trimmed goose feather) which made some really delicate lines. After explaining some dos and don’ts he started drawing with an eiffel tower nib and more sepia ink. Rob drew the basic features (and I mean really basic) of Adam-mainly he just laid down a the basic map of Adam’s features.

Watercolor wash has been moved about to indicate the stucture of Adam's face

Then Rob laid in what seemed like a very dark wash of paint in the shadow area of Adam. It really surprised me how dark he went. Watching Rob I got the idea that we were to go slowand make minute subtle changes as we went. About half way into the demo what had seemed like a reallydark shadow was actually about 60-70 percent dark, it just seemed lighter. At the end of the demo there was a remarkable drawing/study of Adam. There were marks where the nib had ’screeted’ (my make up work) over the paper but it enhanced instead of detracting from the drawing. Then it was our turn.

Some midtones have been added

I should confess here that I’ve used watercolors on and off since the 80s, more on than off-but I am familiar with how to use it. I should say I thought I was. I’d like to blame my surface (I used my moleskine sketchbook with has a hotpressed type surface; but really it was my problems with the materials.

I decided to paint Adam’s back and wanted to emphasis how the light was hitting the shoulders but I bit off way more than I should have. I just couldn’t seem to get things right. I fell so in ‘like’ with the way I was drawing his back that the figure lost it’s dynamic post and because-boring. Sigh.

I guess on the plus side I was willing to step out of my comfort zone (I really wanted to draw with

The finished sketch

pencils or silverpoint).