Reminder

The Fundraiser for Ada will be Monday 6 July at the Duke Street Annex of the Art League.

This is from the flyer that Rob sent out-

Monday, July 6, 2009 10 am – 9:45 pm
Demos and Silent Auction
The Art League’s Duke Street Annex
1 Duke Street, Old Town Alexandria, Virginia
(For all students officially enrolled in Robert Liberace’s Spring 2009 term, Friday classes at The Art League,
this is a make-up class plus demo.)

Rob will do 3 demos that will be offered for Silent Auction during this day.
The proceeds will be donated to Ada Valaitis, beloved Art League model, who was severely injured in a bicycle
accident with an automobile.

Highest bids will be announced at 9:30 pm at the Duke St. Annex.
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC! ALL ARE WELCOME! For all others who wish to support this benefit, there will be a
$55. cash or check fee, at the door, made payable to Ada Valaitis. Please come early, as spaces for non-class
members, are on a first-come, first-served, as space permits only, basis.

For questions, or additional information please contact, Margaret Cerutti 703-683-1780 x 13,
margaretc@theartleague.org

Fundraiser for Artist Model Ada – 6 July

Ada

One of the models who works for the Alexandria Art League was involved in a serious accident several weeks ago.  She is slowly recovering but had no health insurance and has had two surgeries so far.  The wonderful folks at the Alexandria Art League have decided to host a fund raiser to help defray her medical expenses.

Artist Robert Liberace will conduct three painting demonstrations on Monday 6 July 2009 at the Duke Street Annex in Alexandria Virginia.  If you attend during the day there is a free trolley that shuttles between Union Street at the waterfront and the King Street Metro Station (blue and yellow metro lines) -it runs every 20 minutes.  Once at Union and King Street the Duke Street Annex is 2 blocks south.

Rob will be painting all day and should stop around 9:45pm.  If you’ve never had a chance to see him in action-whether you paint or not-now is the time.  I am pretty excited because usually during classes, I am torn between watching Rob’s demo and/or painting.

Throughout the day there will be a silent auction where you can bid on works by Robert Liberace.  Rob has been holding on to his class demos (which are wonderful!) and will have those for sale as well as the demos he creates during the fundraiser.  All of the proceeds go directly to help Ada.

So, if you’ve been fortunate enough to paint with Ada as your model, if you attended the paint-off at the Portrait Society of America (she was a model), if you’ve always wanted to see Robert paint and learn about his techniques-and best of all-if you want a chance to help someone in serious need—plan on attending! I will see you there.

Cindy

PS if you can not attend and would like to donate, contact the art league at 703.683.2323.

Final Friday Evening Pose

Final Class June 2009

For the final evening of the class, I decided to leave well enough alone on my previous painting and to try something different.  I wanted to try Seth Haverkamp’s technique for painting.  As stated in my last entry, Seth started with an very minimal drawing and taught us to render the colors in the shapes and forms we see.

I moved from the rear of the room to closer to the door and the model’s front.  There was some great foreshortening; I chose to work on her abdomen, legs and hips.

I liked how this came out in spite of the fact that I only had a few hours.  It forced me to focus on the colors and shapes and not get so lost in the details.

Artist Seth Haverkamp

Work From Seth Haverkamp's Class

Several weeks ago I took a one day class with artist Seth Haverkamp at his studio in Northern Virginia.  Seth is a talented student in Robert Liberace’s evening course.   I always look at how quickly he works and am amazed.

In 2008, Seth won the Portrait Society of America’s Best  of Show Award.  He painting of his daughter Echo is brilliant and I think it really reflects the time he spent studying at Studio Incamminati.

Seth had us set up and did a quick demo.  What he asked us to do was a very quick and minimal initial drawing of the model.  By minimal I mean some lines to show the shoulders relative to head and neck and a quick line to place nose, eyes, and mouth. That was it.

His point was that for the class we would be painting the shapes we saw in the models face, instead of taking the time to create a detailed initial drawing, we were to concentrate on matching the color and color temperatures as well as getting the exact shape we saw down on canvas.

Color, bright colors were our friend. This of course immediately made me rather nervous since color application to a grisaille is something I struggle with.  I joked about it in class and Seth did his best to reassure me.

I worked really had during this class to see and accurately paint the colors I saw on the model’s skin.  One of the great things about painting this way is that you have plenty of paint on the panel/linen and it really allows you to manipulate the edges and shapes of the painting.

I really liked the final results of the portrait I painted in this class and used what I learned to play with paint in the final session of Rob’s class.  Robert wasn’t there (they were all in Ireland painting) and I loved the painting that I had worked on for the previous four weeks.  I decided to leave my painting along and to  try Seth’s techniques.

Last Four Fridays

I started this post on the 23rd of May and then misplaces the pictures.   Although that probably reads like, “The dog ate my homework” sadly it’s true.  I have too many cards for my camera and somehow they were scrambled.  So, aplogies in advance…

Grisaille 15 May

One May 15th we started the final pose of the class.  We had a great model who has the kind of pale skin that really reflects and bounces light all around.  Marjorie placed her in a reclining position a tad reminiscent of  an obilesque.  Marjorie placed a screaming cadmium orange sheet and thicker ultramarine blue cloth beneath the model.  Colors bounced all over her; it was great.

During the first week of this pose all we worked on was establishing a strong grisaille painting.    I used a 6×8 inch raymar panel (Claessen’s #15 double oil primed – which I love-the paint just slides on the surface).

Second Night

I have to say that I wasn’t crazy with my initial drawing with the painting -I was afraid that I’d made her look a little like a guitar or cello, with that indention in her waist and the way you could see the models hip bone.  I decided to stick with it and see where the painting took me.  One of the most difficult moments I have at this stage is when I lay in the color.  I tend to be too timid and eventually I end up with a very washed out image that tends to gray out.  I’ve worked hard the last two terms to work on it-I guess realizing what I am doing is the first step towards fixing or at least improving on this.

The following Friday (the 22nd) I applied the color.  I don’t think it went too badly, and I really liked how things were going with the painting  so far.  The model’s pose is lovely and rather challenging since almost everyone is dealing with foreshortening of one limb(s) or another.  It has been a lesson in understanding that literal translation of what you see does not always translate well into the actual image.

I had trouble with the orange, I kept trying to put it into the foreground but it really washed out the colors of her flesh.  It was hard to be subtle with the reflections along her buttocks.  When I put the color in that I saw, it did some strange things to the figure.  Eventually I wiped the orange and most of the blue out of the foreground.

Fourth Evening

Another problem I had at this stage was with area of her lower back sometimes referred to as the dimples of venus-the dimples on her lower back.  In her position it formed a diamond shape that had orange, red, and violet.  In order to paint this area the challenge was how to paint these and not make them overwhelm that area-or even worse, to look like a diamond of color slapped on there.  I had to ask Rob to help me on this.  Mainly what he did was to take a #2 round bristle, and gently blend some of the paint around to soften what I had started.

On the third evening, I basically spent more time throwing paint at this- I can’t seem to find the pictures I took of it.  I worked on her legs and feet which came out well.  I really liked the feet because -well I usually would just gloss over them.  This time I think I got them right.  Basically I would add something, think dear lord what did I just do, gently blend it or move paint around a bit more to fix it.  Mainly at the end of the evening the upper back looked a little bit better, somehow I’d soften the shadows enough where they seemed to work-her head and neck weren’t working but I  decided to leave it as is.

On the fourth evening I decided to concentrate on her lower back and legs.  Again I ended up needing help from Rob to translate what I saw and was trying to accomplish and get it down on the canvas.

Rob had suggested leaving it and I think he was right.  So last Friday I went ahead and pulled it out set up-and realised he was right. I really like this painting just as it is.  Friday night, I decided although it was unfinished and I had to work on the uper back,  neck, arm -well everything above the waist- I wanted to leave it as is. So I pulled out another panel and set to work on something else.  I will write about that in another post.

Some Changes

I apologize for the recent lack of posts.  I was in the middle of house hunting which consumed the lions share of my free time.  Now having finally found a home I like (although it needs some renovation) I am in the middle of packing things up for a move.

Hopefully things will calm down in another two weeks or so.  I will start working on a post documenting the progrees of my painting in Rob’s class.  We’ve had the same model for four evenings so far and we get her for one more week!  I am actually pretty happy with how my work went last night.