Friday Night Class 25 Sep 09

Joe, 25 Sep 09

Good class tonight.  I decided to not be cautious and to see if I could apply what I am learning from Robert Liberace as well as the classes with Seth Heverkamp.  Something worked because I was rather pleased with the result.I liked my painting!

I started off with the basics, accurately render the stance of the model by drawing very slight/quick reference lines.  I try to capture the angles of shoulders and hips, figure out which leg is bearing the model’s weight and try to make sure all of my angles are fairly close to what I see.

Once my structure is in place, I work on my darks.  This means that I paint the shapes of the darks using a large (in this case a #6 filbert)  bristle brush and a slightly thinned mixture of odorless mineral spirits (gamsol) and burnt umber.  This step is important. If the shadows are correct then the painting will come together.  If the initial drawing and the shadows are wrong and I add the flesh/light tones then I will be spinning my wheels and will waste time trying to correct a flawed structure.  Frustrating at the very least.

See I am learning.

Ok once the shadows and structure are good, I work them a little more.  What I am trying to do is too not be too fussy but insure the angles are correct and that everything correctly relates to each other.

Once I was satisfied with the shadows, I added a light (in this case burnt sienna, warmed with a touch of cad orange).   I continued to refine the darks and lights-you model what you can-then rinse and repeat.

I really felt like I was on a roll and I can see where the three lessons with Seth Heverkamp is helping.  I guess hearing Seth talk about not being afraid of the paint (I usually paint too thin) and having enough on the painting so I can manipulate the paint is slowly sinking in.

I used titanium white, burnt sienna, a touch of ultramarine blue, cadmium orange, and some red (a dab) I ninja-ed from Kate, a fellow student.

Class with artist Seth Heverkamp

I have another painting class tomorrow with Seth Heverkamp at his northern Virginia studio.   I am really excited about it because we are going to work on a technique I learned in an previous class taught by Seth.  I will post the results when I get home.

Drive

I’ve been attending a fairly intensive training course for my day job.  Between the commute (about 2 1/2 hours round trip) in very heavy traffic, homework and continued unpacking I haven’t had much time to post.  I apologize.

So, I thought I’d post this picture I took last summer near Hingham MA while out during with friends.  Enjoy.

Drive

Some Eye Candy (a Liberace painting demo)

Number one, happy 09-09-09!  Someone mentioned this at the office today and I wondered if it was as auspicious for Asians (especially the Chinese) as  08-08-08 was.

Since class doesn’t start again for another few weeks, so I thought I’d post these pictures from a class demonstration Robert Liberace gave last July.  The pictures are from an cell phone camera so they may be a little dark or grainy.

I will just post them in order, with the commentary in the title.  I checked the time that the photos were taken and it looks like the demo happened in an hour and 20 two 20-minute sessions according to a fellow classmate.  The results are pretty amazing.

Hope you like this.

Demo begins

Rob applies and then evaluates the light color, focus is on only painting the lights and darks/shadows at this point

Rob started using it in the light areas. Note how bright it seems.

Most of the basic light tone has been laid in.

Rob started modifying the light paint with half tones to help create the sense of form and shape.

You can see the modeling from the half tones very clearly in this picture.

You can see the detail that Rob added, this is about 1 hour and 15 minutes into the demo.

Another close up at the hour and 15 minute point.

The completed painting.

Saturday Class

Full Figure

I signed up for another class with artist Seth Heverkamp at his northern Virginia Studio.  The class was great as always.  We warmed up with one- minute poses and then had a very quick 15 minute demo by Seth.  Then he unleashed us.

The technique we used this time was establishing the figure using the same techniques as our one-minute sketches.  Initially,  we were supposed to make sure we captured her attitude and posture.  Period.  Once we nailed it we went into a more detailed figure ‘drawing’ using burnt umber.  When that was reviewed we could add color, insuring we only painted out darks and lights.

For this class we were only supposed to use cadmium orange mixed with titanium white and some of the burnt umber already on our pallets.  Sadly for me I had no cad orange and  like an idiot I used my transparent indian yellow from old holland (man I love that color).  Lesson learned, indian orange turns yellow when added to white.  I hated the results and wanted to cheat and paint the knee instead.  Seth discouraged me (rightly so).

Close up

One of my classmates was kind enough to lent me some cad orange and things immediately got a tad better.  I didn’t hate it so much.  I kept working on it-the finished study is okay.  Nothing great.  I had a hard time with her legs and I don’t think I ever got them right.

I really liked how her left arm, breast and chest came out.  In person you can see what it is and it’s painterly to my eyes.  By that I mean that I can see what it is but I can also really see how the paint rendered that area.

If you look close you will see that I put in some ultramarine blue with white for the area of her armpit and pubic mound when Seth wasn’t looking.

Lessons learned:

With less than 2 hours of actual painting time  you can not afford to work on the entire figure–pick a specific area and focus on it

If a part of the anatomy is in shadow but has reflected lights (from lighting our easels) don’t paint them with the light, leave it in shadow

Bring cadmium orange to all figure painting classes

Even if you hate the results while you  are in class, keep going.  You may end up liking the end result, if you quit you’ll never know how it really would have ended

Don’t eat paint (ok I didn’t try this but I thought I’d throw it in cads are heavy metals and toxic if ingested) don’t eat flake white either-it’s lead!!

Seth will be teaching another class at his studio on September 19th.  Contact him (seth.haverkamp AT gmail.com) if you’re interested in attending.

Paint Made Flesh Show-GO!!

I went to the Paint Made Flesh show at the Phillips collection last weekend specifically to see Jenny Saville’s painting Hyphen. What I didn’t realize was how massive this painting was, it was enormous. The paint is thin, the paint is as thick as frosting on a cake.  In several places the thick paint abuts almost sheer canvas with a thick link of paint almost like a curb along a pavement.

If you get close, really close, the painting is almost like an abstract.  The flesh is pink and red with many pink tinged greys.  But stand far away, it reads so beautifully across the room.  It’s glorious.

Ms. Saville was discovered in her late 20s by British collector Saatchi (of the Damon Hirst, shark in Formaldehyde infamy).

I found this image via a google search.  The site, Artknowledgenews.com wrote what looked like a very thorough article about the show.  Unfortunately the site is in Spanish

Lucian Freud, Naked Man, Back View

The biggest delight and surprise for me was seeing my all time favorite Lucien Freud painting, Naked Man, Back View.  It’s of Leigh Bowery and it’s an in your face painting of Leigh from the back. It normally resides in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and this is the painting that led me to love Freud.

The painting measures  72 1/4 x 54 1/8 in. (183.5 x 137.5 cm) and there isn’t a part of it that hasn’t been rendered thoughtfully and beautifully.

I was unable to photograph it this time, or I would have really tried to show the amazing subtleties in the drape and stool that Leigh is sitting on.

Here is a link to an National Public Radio article on the show as well.  If you live in the metro DC area or you plan on being here for the 3-day Labor Day weekend please head over to the Phillip Collection (it’s a museum for those out of town!).

According to their site, the museum will be open Saturday (10am-5pm)  and Sunday (11am-6pm).  There is an entrance fee of $12. a person but they offer a senior, student or military discount of $2.oo off.   If you have any questions you can reach them at 202-387-02151.

If you take the metro to DuPont Circle make sure you leave via Q Street.  Also don’t forget that the crazy people running the metro decided to close it from Regan National Airport to the Pentagon City for reasons that baffle mere humans.  So, for the first time ever I urge you to avoid the metro like the plague if you’re heading into DC on the blue or yellow lines in Virginia.

The Figure in Motion DVD-by Robert Liberace

The Figure In Motion

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of artist Robert Liberace’s second instructional DVD release.  I just received a notice from Lina (Rob’s wonderful wife) that the DVDs are now available through their website.

Rob has also released a slightly different youtube video snippet as well.