... And Still More Experimentation

 After finishing up my last post about the Undertakers II painting, I discovered another interesting artist.  I listen to three different podcasts where artists are interviewed, and one of them talked with Jennifer Anderson.  Her approach sounded remarkably like what I try to do, so I looked up her work.  And it was a "wow".  Very strong technically, compositionally, and emotionally.  She was doing in oil paint something very similar to what I had been doing in charcoal and pastel over the past few years, and what I had tried and failed to do in oil.  These are single figures or faces that carry so much of the sitter's character.  Here's a sample, titled Fragile: 

Here we have a single figure, extremely well painted.  The chair she's sitting on has been reduced to just a few lines, and her environment has been reduced to a barely-modulated flat surface.  This helps focus attention on the figure.  The background has a very slight gradation, enough to tell you that it wasn't ignored.  And the figure has been pushed over to one side.  The fact that it runs off the canvas to the top, left, and bottom results in those edges being fully engaged in the composition.  The large flat gray space to the right becomes important in its own right, and there is a strong diagonal running from upper right to lower left that gives it a dynamic tension.  All together, this composition speaks to me of the young woman's inner thoughts: probably not idyllic, somewhat unsettled, but being seriously considered.

 Here's a comparable piece of my charcoal/pastel series, Astrid #1:

 

This was done in one of our weekly life sessions.  Single female figure, flat background, deliberately not "finished".  It has some of the same characteristics of Jennifer's work, but not all.  The figure is pushed to the side to create some room in front of her face, but not to the extent of Jennifer's work.  In most of my artworks in this series, though, the figure is centered on the page.  I discovered that this positioning doesn't really engage the rest of the surrounding space.  It's just ... space.  In Astrid #1, the empty space is more important conceptually.  It's not something I ever thought about, it just was.  Now I know to think about it.  Another issue is that the background here is flat and untouched.  In many works in the series, it comes across as unfinished or unaddressed.  This was something I wrestled with and never really came to a satisfactory conclusion.

So after looking at Anne Magill's work (see my last post) and Jennifer Anderson's figures, I tried some lessons learned in new paintings.  My intentions: simplify, engage the whole space, simplify, single figure, pay attention to edges, some areas developed while others are flat, and simplify.  Here's the first effort, Natalie:

And the second, Emma: 

So ... success?  I think I'm onto something that I can really sink my teeth into.  What do you think?

Copying a Painting

Sometimes, when things aren't going quite right, for whatever reason, I'll stop what I'm doing and copy somebody else's painting.  It's proven to be a good way to re-set my inner painting mojo.  Recently, I spent three weeks out of the studio due to everything surrounding the coronavirus lockdown.  Three weeks is enough time to get rusty.  When I got back to the studio, my first project was to finish up a painting from several weeks earlier.  I think it turned out pretty awful.  Then I tried to finish up another painting and wound up scrubbing everything new off of it.  Then I tried working on yet a third painting and didn't get anywhere.  Okay, time to re-set.

As I've noted on here several times before, I've been looking at the Swedish artist Nick Alm.  I don't really care for the subject matter of his paintings, which tend to be a bunch of young Swedes getting drunk in cafes.  I'm not young or Swedish, and I haven't been drunk in a cafe in quite a few decades.  What I'm fascinated by is Alm's technical capability.  There are two parts to this: his compositions, and his skill with putting paint on canvas.

I've talked about his compositions in another post.  My "third painting" mentioned above is actually an attempt to use insights from studying his compositions in a painting of my own.  It's been underway for, oh, six months, and is nowhere near done.  But this time, I'm not looking at composition, I'm looking specifically at how he puts paint on canvas.  And, for that, I copy.

I was looking at paint application because I just couldn't get into the groove of mixing paint, using the brush effectively, and getting the effect I wanted.  Everything seemed to be over-saturated, too contrasty, and too hard-edged.  Alm's paintings, by contrast, have muted colors that are still rich, much softer contrasts, and more subtle gradations between colors, shapes, and objects.  I dug through Mr. Google to find some information about his technical approach and eventually found some good info that I could use to get started.

So here's the image that I chose to copy.  It's actually a detail of a much larger painting.

What drew me to this?  The muted skin tones, transitions between one area and the next, soft edges, blending, accuracy of drawing, lots of stuff.  Look at how his shirt and her top are really just one large white shape, look at how his arm blends into her chest, how her throat blends into the shadow and then into his jaw, and how the light is depicted around her eye and down her cheek, for example.

For this exercise, I used a very limited palette, which is based on the colors he uses.  It consisted of Venetian red (an earthy but strong color), Transparent Gold Ochre (a slightly clearer version of Yellow Ochre), Mars Black (really a very very dark blue), and Flake White (a lead-based white).  That's it.  And here's how it turned out:

Maybe I shouldn't have shown you the image I was copying ...

I can whine that the colors from my iPhone photo aren't accurate and a few other things, but hey, it's just an exercise and I don't have Alm's painting skills.  It was really worthwhile to look at each area carefully to see what the colors are, how they're blended or not, where the strong edges are, how he did the shadows, and so on.  So while my copy is kinda ugly, it was still a very valuable learning experience.

So what's next?  Well, my ambition is bigger than my capabilities.   I'm looking at taking the painting that's been in progress for six months and starting over on a much larger scale.  I'll use the lessons learned from the first version, and from this exercise, in building the bigger one.  I'm probably in over my head, but as an artist friends says, "it's just a painting". 

Studio Projects

I've got a whole bunch of projects going on in the studio right now.  They keep lining up in the queue and piling up faster than I can get 'em done.  It's frustrating in that there's so much that I want to do, but it's also exciting, in that I already have enough to keep me busy full-time for months.  And that's without new projects that are going to crop up.  So here's a look at what I've got going.

First off, I have a double-portrait commission.  A wonderful couple from Greensboro recently got married and wanted an artwork to commemorate the occasion.  What we decided on was a charcoal and pastel portrait of the two of them together.  I got with them for a photo session, figured out which photos told the story the best, and got started.  Double portraits are usually tricky.  The first figure usually goes in without too much trouble, but the second will kick my butt.  That's because I have to match the size, lighting, and technique to the first figure.  So in addition to getting a good likeness and bringing life to the image, there are these other issues that have to be considered.  It can be frustrating, but it's also fun.

I'm doing a series of portraits of a wedding planner.  Mary Bell is one of the very best wedding planners I've worked with.  She's on top of every detail about any event, keeping vendors like me in line, and making sure everything goes off like clockwork, all while making it easy and stressless for the couples and guests.  I had Mary in the studio recently for a photo session.  Two charcoal and pastel artworks are now done.  The first image is in line with my series of figurative works: high-contrast lights and darks, very dramatic.  The second is more like a portrait, with the value contrasts dialed back and better lighting on her face.  Here are the two images for comparison.  You can click on the images to see larger versions.

Mary #1

Mary #2

Another new figure series is in the queue.  Jazmin, one of the regular models for my Wednesday night life sessions, came to the studio for a photo session a while back.  Jazmin is a lively young lady, very spirited, a bit of a show-off (in a good way), and a natural in front of a camera.  There are a lot of images that are just screaming to get caught on paper or canvas.  I haven't done one from these photos yet, but here's one from one of her life sessions last year.

Jazmin #4

Meanwhile, as I've noted in previous posts, I've been looking at the artwork of Nick Alm for quite some time.  The way he puts multi-figure compositions together is pretty incredible.  They are based on a strong abstract composition that underlies the whole canvas, and the figures are placed so that they comprise the structure and tell the story.  Here's one example:

Nick Alm: "Bacchanal"

Here you can see that the figures in white form an upside-down triangle.  The figures on the right merge into one large dark shape, while on the left, the wall, chair, man's trousers, and shadows all blend into another single dark shape.  The girl in the center is set off by her long dark hair and the detail in her face and figure.  This is only one example - Google "Nick Alm" and you'll see dozens of examples.

I wanted to try to put some of his approach into practice and see how it works for me.  I have several thousand photos of weddings and receptions, so I raided my stash for reference images and am putting together a test painting.  Here's what it looked like a week ago:

This was okay, but there were some serious issues.  One, I used Alm's muted palette of largely black, white, and grays.  That works in paintings of a bunch of people sitting around cafes getting drunk, but doesn't work in a celebratory situation like a wedding.  It needed to feel lighter and happier - it needed bright colors.  Two, although the three bridesmaids were facing the viewer, none of the men were.  In fact, three had their backs to us.  In a painting that's meant to memorialize an event, you want to memorialize the people who were there, so you need to see their faces.  So I made some changes.  Here's how it looks now:

Obviously, I blew up the reception hall and moved everybody outside.  Were they really outside?  Who cares?  It's a much more cheerful picture.  I reversed the guy on the right, changed the guy he was talking to into a grandmother, and revised the figures on the left.  Much better.  Now I need to add some more figures: at least one, maybe two, around the guy sitting on the left, and another sitting on the right.  But what I've learned is that I can take Alm's approach of creating a large abstract composition, featuring large areas of light and color, make them into people, and the painting will work.

This still has a VERY long way to go, but it's been an interesting trip so far.  I've been learning a lot about composition and tying things together - all lessons that I can carry into this year's crop of wedding paintings.

In addition to all this, I've been keeping my Wednesday night life group going.  It's not always successful for me.  I had a string of three weeks in a row where my works were not just substandard, they were pretty bad:

And we had a beautiful model that night.  Sheesh.  Since then, though, things have been going better.

So that's what's going on in the studio right now.  Lots of stuff to do and I'm excited about digging into all of it even more over the next few months!

Last Wedding Painting of 2018

I completed the last wedding painting of the year just a couple of days ago.  The next day, Klaire and Drew came by the studio to pick it up, and I had one of those moments that swells your heart.  The first time a couple sees their painting in real life is magic.  In this case it was a high-pitched "OHHHmygaaawwwwdddd", complete with eyes wide and hands to face.  Yep, I think I nailed it.

The last time they had seen their painting was at their reception.  I was packing up and they were about to head out the door for the sparkler run, but they came over to get one last look at it.  They already loved it, even though I told them it was just a rough block-in.  Here's how it looked then:

As a block-in, this is barely satisfactory.  It establishes the basic composition and the couple's pose, but that's about it.  The pose is roughed-in, the wedding party is just hinted at, and the crowd is nonexistent at this point.  Time to get to work in the studio.

Over the next few weeks, I reworked every square inch of the canvas multiple times.  Drew and Klaire were developed, the crowd added and changed, the wedding party developed, both sets of parents were included, the forest and arbor behind them were brought up to spec, and the two ferns on pedestals developed.  And here's how it turned out:

Quite a change, isn't it?  I feel pretty good about the end result.  Apparently, so do they!

My next booking isn't until well into spring, so now I have a bit of a hiatus from wedding paintings.  There are a lot of other works that I've had in mind for a long time, but haven't been able to get to them, so over the next few months they'll be tackled, one at a time.

If you'd like to know more about my wedding paintings and the whole process, check out the Asheville Event Paintings site.

30 in 30, Day 4

Claire's Pakistani Dress

My friend Claire went to a wedding in Pakistan a while back.  Her friends there gave her this outfit to wear - much more appropriate than western garb!  She wore this to our modeling session.  Lots of fun getting the colors!

Color Testing and the New Painting

In my last post, I talked about a new painting on my easel.  One of the things I want to work on is color mixing.  The impetus came from researching Jeremy Lipking's process.  I had noticed that his colors were beautifully muted without going into mud.  That's not an easy thing to do.  Several people who have taken workshops with him have made blog posts about his processes.  As it turns out, his palette is pretty basic with almost no unusual colors.  One notable difference is that he does not use earth colors (the umbers, siennas, and yellow ochre) because, he says, they go to mud very quickly.  That being said, he apparently does use burnt Sienna on occasion, plus a couple of reds that could be considered earth tones, depending on how they're prepared by the paint maker.

So with this painting, I thought I'd use a very limited palette and use them to mix a range of grays and muted colors.  Today, in the studio, I put that plan into action.  I put some ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow medium, cadmium red light, and Flemish white (a lead white) on the palette.  Then I mixed up a range of cool and warm grays, then some cooler and warmer skin tones.  Here's how the process looked:

There were more sheets, but you get the idea.  I'm seeing a nice range of cool and warm grays, nice muted greens, and some good skin tones.  Some of the mixtures gave a dark brown and I was even able to come up with one that was close to burnt Sienna.  No blacks, though.  Ultramarine blue and cad red will give a very dark muted purple, but as soon as you add a bit of yellow to the mixture, it gets lighter.

The next step was to apply some of these colors to the new painting.  I started on the face, since that's the focus, and laid in what will probably be the first of several layers.  Here's a detail of how it looks right now:

This is a fun challenge.  I'm excited to see what happens with it next.  I'll let you in on a secret: I have no idea how it'll turn out!

Starting a New Painting

I haven't done much of anything in the studio for the past three weeks or so.  When our dog came down with vestibular disease, that took all my attention through the holidays.  I mean, I have my priorities, and my dogs are a very important part of my family, and I needed to take care of the little girl.  Over the past week or so, I've been able to get into the studio three times, so things are starting to move again.

Being out of the studio for a while may have a benefit that I didn't expect.  For the past couple of years, I've been working on figures and experimenting with ways of capturing an individual's character on paper or canvas.  This has included mark-making that is more energetic, exploring how much to "finish" a work vice leaving parts of it "unfinished", and trying to be a bit less literal about what goes into an artwork.  In the back of my mind, there has been this idea that the next level is to put those figures into environments and situations where there's more of a story or metaphor.  Now, after being away for a while, it seems to be time to go to that next level.

I've had an idea that I wanted to take one of my charcoal and pastel works and blow it up in oil on a much larger canvas.  The specific piece is this one:

Astrid #7

There are many things I like about this work: the strong focus on the face, the unselfconscious and slightly awkward pose, the overall composition of light and dark, the unfinished nature of most of the work, the mystery that comes from the eyes being in heavy shadow, and the confrontational and challenging nature of Astrid's gaze directly at the viewer.

One reason that I hadn't translated this into an oil on canvas earlier is that I wasn't sure how to capture the looseness of the charcoal and pastel.  Oil painting is a different beast entirely and I have not been able to get the same effect in oil that I can get in charcoal.  But now I think I have an idea about how to move forward with this image.  No, I'm not going to try to duplicate it.  Instead, I'm going to use it as an inspiration for a very different work.

So that's what I started yesterday.  The first thing I did was to lay a piece of tracing paper over the original and grid it up.  A grid is an old and low-tech way of enlarging or shrinking a composition.  You build a grid over the original, build a new grid on the canvas where you want the image, and draw the outline on the corresponding grid marks.  Here's the original with the tracing paper and grid over it:

Some artists use a projector to enlarge an image onto a canvas.  I don't.  One of the reasons is that I like the grid system.  It's low-tech and ensures that there are human errors incorporated into the image.  That's an advantage to me because human errors are the big difference between art and photography.  The original of Astrid #7 was done freehand and you can see some of the "errors" if you look closely.  The chair, for example, is a little lopsided, which is fine by me.

The next step is to draw a corresponding grid on the canvas and then transfer the composition onto it. Here's how the canvas looks:

Okay, sorry, it's a bit hard to see, but you can barely make out the gridlines and some of the drawing.  I use vine charcoal because it erases easily.  And yes, the canvas really does have a slightly greenish sloppy tint to it.  I had started a painting on it four years ago, but it failed, so I painted oil primer over it and then toned it again.  The canvas has been waiting for something new ever since.

And here's my painting setup.  The original is 25"x19" and the new canvas is 50"x40".

This afternoon, I started on the canvas.  I wiped out all the gridlines then laid in a cool dark as basically one large shape.  I'm trying to use a limited palette as much as possible, so I've got ultramarine blue, cad red, cad yellow medium, and Flemish white on my palette.  I'll let this dry a day or three before starting to develop the figure.  So here's how it stands right now:

Latest Artworks

I haven't posted any new artwork on here in quite a while, have I?  Okay, time to play catch-up.  I've been working on several different things.

I've got a new wedding painting on my easel right now that I'm close to finishing up.  No, it's not ready for prime time yet, so you can't see it, but at least you know it's there and it has been sucking up a good bit of studio time lately.

I've also got a double-portrait commission pretty much done.  The one who commissioned it is going to come to the studio soon to give it the thumbs-up or thumbs-down.  Once I get a thumbs-up, you'll see it here.  Again, it's something that has been taking up a good bit of studio time.

I've done several more new pieces in my charcoal and pastel series.  Several focus on Astrid, a lovely young lady:

 Astrid #1

 Astrid #2

 Astrid #3

 Astrid #4

 Astrid #5

Astrid #6

I see some of these as more successful than others.  My favorites are #1 and #4.  I'd like to hear what you think - leave a note a tell me!

We had a young man sit for our Wednesday night group a couple of weeks ago as a portrait model.  Nicholas has very distinctive features and was an excellent model, as well as being a really fascinating subject of study.  Here's how his portrait turned out:

Nicholas

The next week, we had a new model, Jazmin.  I was pretty happy with her head and face at the end of the session, but didn't like the way everything below her neck turned out.  So the next day, I wiped out the body and reworked it entirely.  This second try turned out much better:

Jazmin

So there you have it: most of my artworks over the past many weeks.  There were a bunch of other attempts in addition to these, but they were failures and consigned to the trash bin.  My failure rate seems to hover around 50% - that is, half of the things I start wind up looking pretty bad, at least to my eyes.  Of the ones that are not failures, maybe half are okay, some are not bad, and a very few are pretty good.  Many years ago, one art student told me that he never had failures.  I told him he wasn't trying hard enough!

The Nature of Figurative Work

This will be a kinda stream-of-consciousness post here as I'm still thinking this through.  As is pretty obvious by now, I'm a figurative painter.  I've always been interested in the figure.  Way back in the mid-70's (yes, I'm that old), I was an art major at Memphis State University taking a bunch of required courses, including ceramics.  The instructors wanted me to throw pots, but pots bored the stink out of me.  Instead, all my creations were figures of some sort: a "vase" shaped like a head (it was really hideous), various figurines, that sort of thing.  Years later, in a continuing-ed painting course at Maryland Institute College of Art, the teacher had us doing abstract and non-objective works so that we could have a better understanding of basic composition, color, and other issues.  I learned about that stuff, but the figures kept creeping back in.  My senior show at UNC Asheville was all figures.  After I established my own studio, I did a series of still lifes using old children's toys and stuffed animals.  They were really figure works using stuffed animals as stand-ins.

Okay, so I'm a figurative artist.  The next question is, which artists are my influences?  Which ones do I want to emulate to a greater or lesser extent?  That's a bit trickier to answer than it first appears.  It gets into the purpose behind the art.

Some artists use figures as a way to tell their own story.  The figures in the painting may or may not be realistic and recognizable, but their identity is not that important.  Instead, it's all about the context in the picture, and the context is the artist's story.  Think of the Renaissance paintings, for example, in which individual figures are used to tell biblical stories.  More recently, Norman Rockwell's paintings are narratives that use his neighbors as role-players.  The figures are recognizable, but their role in the painting has nothing to do with who they really are.  Currently, Jerome Witkin is using this sort of approach to make some unbelievably powerful images about the Holocaust and other social issues.  I do this sometimes to tell a specific story, as in these paintings:

You Don't Understand

Oil on canvas, diptych, 40"x62"

Dancers

Oil on panel, 52"x40"

Another approach is to use the figure as an object of beauty, or of study.  In this case, the identity of the individual isn't important, nor is there a story.  It's more about making an interesting image, or of showing the beauty of an individual form.  There's a lot of this type of work out there.  Google "figure painting" and look at the images and this is the type of work you're going to see.  It's most often a pretty young nude woman and could come out of any life drawing and painting session.  One artist who takes it to an extreme conclusion is Philip Pearlstein.  I gotta say, I can't stand his work.  Why?  Because Pearlstein may as well be painting a slab of meat.  His paintings are studies of formal compositions using people and other objects.  There's no story to tell, and there's no interest in the figures as individual people.  Take this painting, for example:

Two Nudes and Four Duck Decoys

Philip Pearlstein

You know a lot about the bodies of these two women, but you have no idea about them, personally.  And there's no reason they should be hanging over some duck decoys except that it makes for some interesting shapes and color contrasts.

Let's contrast Pearlstein with another artist who did a lot of nudes lying around in the studio, but who had a very different approach.  Lucian Freud seems to have channeled his grandfather in order to dive into the psyche of the people he painted.  Even though his sitters had poses similar to Perlstein's, and Freud's color palette was very similar, Freud's subjects are very real and very individual people.  This painting, for example:

Two Women

Lucian Freud

I feel like I know something about these two women, just from the way Freud painted them.  They have life in them, there's a relationship between them, and I get a sense that there's a lot going on behind their eyes.  They're not just two people arranged in a composition.

This is the approach that appeals most to me: getting something of the subject's personality, character, and individuality into the image.  These days, I'm not so much interested in telling my own stories because I don't find my own stories that interesting.  It's more interesting to learn something about the person I'm working with, even if I don't know them or even speak to them.  As an example, here's a drawing of an Afghan bazaar merchant who was sitting in one of our meetings in Kandahar province:

Bazaar Merchant

What struck me about this guy was his dignity and composure.  He seemed like an honest, hard-working guy, intelligent, and reserved.  That's what I was trying to get in this drawing, not just an interesting face.  I think it was successful.

That's the same kind of approach that underlies most of my work.  Over the past couple of years, I've been experimenting a lot with new technical approaches.  I've been looking at several artists, particularly Mark Demsteader and Nick Alm, because their chiaroscuro lighting and compositions are technically excellent and have a lot of dramatic impact.  I've been experimenting with this chiaroscuro with the models who've worked with me in the studio.  But what has really driven my work is trying to get some of the models' personalities.  The dramatic lighting and compositions are tools to help the story but they're not the end in themselves.

Jennifer #5

Charcoal and pastel on toned paper

I can explain a lot of my technical approach when I run a workshop, including lighting, anatomy, and connecting your eyes with your hands in getting the image on canvas or paper.  One thing that I cannot explain is capturing the personality.  When I'm working with a model, I am always conscious of that individual as a person.  I can clinically look at them to analyze the shape of their skull or the way the shadow of the jaw falls across the neck, and I can explain that to students.  What I haven't figured out is how to explain that I'm aware of them as Jennifer, or Amy, or James, or whoever.  That part is the filter that processes the analytic stuff.  I don't know how it works, it just does.

Last week, I had a new model work with me in the studio.  You're going to see a lot of new artworks come out of that session over the next few weeks.  Here's one in progress to whet your appetite:

Two Paintings and a Workshop

Two paintings and a workshop walk into a bar ...

No, that's not how it goes.  Since the last update here, there have been several things going on in the studio.  And yes, I have pictures this time!

In the last post, I mentioned that I was working on a new sample painting for the live event painting side of the house.  That one is now done, and here it is:

Rick and Julie

Oil on canvas, 24"x30"

This was fun to do, and a bit of a challenge, but in the end I think it came out very well.  It has certainly gotten lots of good words from people who have seen it.

I completed another painting several days after this one.  Long-time readers will know that I've been wrestling with some new (for me) concepts in figure painting.  Mostly, they revolve around the concept of completeness, meaning how complete to make the painting.  I've been working on a series of charcoal and pastel figurative works over the past year that dealt with that concept and those seem to be working pretty well.  Not so with the paintings.  Almost all the paintings in which I've tried that concept have been painted over or otherwise destroyed.  I just have not been able to translate the feeling of the charcoal and pastel works into paint.  My most recent attempt is a bit more successful and I don't mind showing this one:

Amy D #1

Oil on canvas, 24"x18"

It is definitely not where I want to be, but it's further along the path than I've been so far.  What I'm focusing on here is finer brushwork around the face, with increasingly looser brushwork the further you move away.  I'm also very conscious of edges.  The only sharp edge is along the side of the temple and cheekbone, with a slightly softer edge around the shoulder, and considerably softer edges everywhere else ... in some cases, no edges at all.  And I'm looking at value contrasts to help guide the eye.  Here the highest value contrast is in the same place: along the temple and cheekbone.  So the brushwork, edges, and value contrasts are working together to put the focus on her face.  Color isn't playing along, though.  The strongest color is the blue clothing, which draws attention away.  The background is a muted red, but it's still a bit too strong and does nothing to guide the eye.  And, finally the color in the face is the same as the color on her side.  Again, nothing to indicate what's important and what's not.  So I guess I'll have to try another painting and see if I can figure it out.

In addition to doing a couple of artworks, I ran a portrait drawing workshop a week ago.  Had a good turnout for it and they were all a lot of fun.  My focus in this workshop is less on the drawing and much more on seeing.  So we spent the first day talking about shapes of the head and different features, and drawing each other, and then talking about what we were seeing.  The second day, each of the students took a turn as a model while the others drew.  After each, we talked about what features made each individual unique, and how the different drawings were successful (or not) in capturing that.  It was really cool to see everybody develop very rapidly over such a short time.

Coming up, I've got a workshop scheduled for Saturday, March 4, to talk about a logical, easy-to-use approach to mixing color.  Lots of schools don't really teach it.  In my early days, they just wanted me to remember what all the colors would do with each other.  Right.  I have trouble remembering what I had for breakfast, and you want me to remember an infinite number of color combinations?  Finally, when I was taking classes at Maryland Institute College of Art, I learned an approach that worked for me.  That's what I'll be teaching at this workshop.  Interested?  You can sign up on my website:
www.skiprohde.com/store/p16/Color_Mixing_Workshop.html

Experimenting

I haven't been posting any new artworks on my studio Facebook page or anywhere else lately.  The reason?  I've been experimenting.  By definition, many (most) experiments fail, and I don't like to display my failures.  However, it's about time I posted something, and so here's a discussion about what I've been up to.

As you long-time readers know (all 3 of you), I've been looking at Mark Demsteader's figurative work for over a year.  Demsteader has a way of drawing and painting that is really intriguing to me.  He takes what could be a boring pose and turns it into something mysterious and fascinating.  Last year, I looked at his drawings, copied a few, and then found a way to adapt the lessons learned to my own way of working.  That led to the series of charcoal and pastel figures that now number about 40 and are still growing.  For reference, here's one of the most recent:

Emma #7

I really enjoy this approach.  It can say a lot without specifically saying a lot ... if that makes sense ... it makes the viewer fill in a lot of blanks and create their own story, rather than having me provide all the information needed to tell a very specific story that may or may not have any resonance with the viewer.

I should also add that this is my own work using lessons learned from Demsteader.  It is not the work of a Demsteader wanna-be.  His style is very intriguing to me, but I'm not him, and he doesn't do this style of artwork.  So I learned something of the approach from him, adapted it to my own needs, and have been playing with it ever since.

What has not worked so far, however, is adapting this approach in paint.  Almost every one of my attempts has been a complete failure.  One reason, I think, is that the charcoal/pastel approach requires only a few marks on the surface of the paper, and the fact that most of the paper is blank is an important part of the piece's concept.  Since nothing is there, it redirects your attention to the figure while providing a quiet background for the figure to work against.  Painting is different: it requires that every inch of the surface be marked in some way.  Even when the background is essentially a flat color, it's still a mark, meaning that the artist has addressed that area like he's addressed the figure.  So there's a conceptual difference between the two mediums.

Another difference is that, in the charcoal/pastel works, the color is limited to a relatively small area.  Areas of lesser focus (the lower arms and legs in Emma #7 above, for example) are only depicted in charcoal, with no color, and are a bit looser/rougher in execution.  So the difference between finished and unfinished areas is something that helps focus attention while providing a bit of tension within the work.  I haven't been able to do that in paint.  My "finish it all" instinct kicks in and I take it too far.  Here's an example:

Amy #10

This might illustrate what I've been struggling with.  As you can see, every square inch of the artwork has to be addressed, even if there's nothing really there.  Compare the background here to the background of Emma #7.  And, as you can see, the legs are just as defined as the face.  There's less differentiation between the head/face and the rest of the figure, as well as the background, so the eye just wanders around with no clear focus.  I considered this one a failure and it's now been painted over.

So, to try to understand Demsteader's approach to these figure paintings, and to reverse-engineer his process to see what I could learn from it, I copied one.  Here's one called Shallow Waters:

Beautiful, isn't it?  Lots of depth, a strong melancholy mood, mysterious figure, great composition of abstract shapes.  So here's my copy:

Yeah, it looks like crap next to his.  Still, it was a good learning experience.  Here's what I noted:
- Getting those effects requires many many layers of paint.  You can't do it all in one go, like you can with the charcoal and pastel pieces.
- The background is almost purely black, versus light backgrounds in his (and my) charcoal drawings.  There's just enough color to give it some depth.
- The figure itself is just a 3-value depiction: highlighted areas (cheekbone, forehead, nose, above the upper lip), mid-values (arm, shoulder, back), and shadowed areas (suggested, not depicted).  The highlighted areas help focus attention on the face.
- Almost all edges are soft.  The only somewhat hard edges are the cheekbone, nose, edge of upper lip, and the top of the shoulder, all of which help focus attention towards the face.  All other edges are very soft, which tell the viewer "don't focus here".
- The dress is an abstract shape and color that suggests rather than depicts.  It's just paint scumbled over darker layers underneath, with rough/soft edges with no definition.  Even though it has the strongest color in the painting, it is not the focus - its color plays a supporting role to the face.

One other thing is that the eyes in Demsteader's figures are almost always in heavy shadow.  This really gives the figures an air of mystery and pulls the viewer in.

So where do I go from here?  I'll continue to experiment with this approach.  Something is going to click soon and I'll have a new way of painting in my toolbox that will be my adaptation of this technique.  

Figure Painting Workshop

I ran a figure painting workshop in my studio this weekend.  We had a full class of six students - the maximum I want in my studio so they're not falling all over each other.  The workshop ran for four hours on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

I divided the effort into two parts.  On Saturday, the students worked on a monochrome painting of the figure.  This was a value study done in only one color.  A painting done this way is often called a "grisaille" (pronounced "griz-I").  Grisaille means "gray", and a grisaille painting is technically in black and white, but since we used burnt umber or other colors, I prefer the term "monochrome".  (Okay, enough nerdiness, on to the rest of the story ...)

On Sunday, the students took the monochrome painting and went over it in color.  We focused on skin tones, warm and cool tints, reflected lights, shadow colors, background colors, and matching the values of the colors to the values of the monochrome.

Dividing the painting process this way might seem roundabout, but it's actually easier for many artists, including me.  It separates the decisions associated with the composition, drawing, and light/dark values from the decisions associated with color, warm/cool, reflected lights, and intensity.  The idea is to use a simple approach first to make the fundamental decisions about the composition of the painting, and then gradually add more light/dark values and then color until you get something you can consider done.  (Or until it's so badly messed up that you throw it away.  One or the other.)

I had a great time with the students.  This was the first time I'd put on this particular workshop and I didn't know how it would go.  When you have good students, it always goes well.  They all seemed to thoroughly enjoy the class as well.  I paused the painting process a couple of times each session so we could see each other's work, talk about what was working and not working, get the students to talk about what they were experiencing, and compare notes.  All of them had different approaches.  By talking about their issues, and about what they saw in each other's work, they could learn a lot more than if everybody was doing the same thing.

So here are a few images from this weekend:

Some of the students, hard at work ...

And here are their paintings:

I'm proud of the way all six of them developed over just two days in the studio!