I’m trying out organizing my posts differently. I’m hoping it aids the reader in finding the most pertinent information. In particular, I intend to front-load any notes regarding my intention, and my overall reflections across the exercises. In that summary I’ll link to relevant sections of the remainder of the post, so the reader can bring them up in other tabs, or whatever. I’ll also provide a “table of contents” for more directed navigation.

Life drawing/painting sessions are thin on the ground, here, as most groups folded during the pandemic. Those that are restarted don’t align well with my work schedule. For this part I’ll be relying on self portraiture, online model sessions, and some licensed professional reference photos.

I’m fairly comfortable with drawing the figure, its something I quite enjoy. I haven’t ever used paint in these sessions though it is a goal to learn how to use paint more quickly and effectively in time constrained sessions.

Areas of focus / effort:

• Following from Tutor feedback, paying close attention to how I place colours together. Leverage warm/cool relationships and not just across the colour wheel: also warm/cool variations around similar colours.
  
  → Observing my practice, I’m prone to mixing piles of paint on my palette and not deviating from them. Instead, ending up blending them on the support. I should treat the mixed paints as “primaries” around which to evolve other hues.
  
• Consistency of the paint itself. I lose track of this while painting, which I think gets in the way. Can I build in practice exercises that help me gain an understanding and intuition here? Pay attention to how choice of surface impacts choice of paint consistency. Gather some materials together and compare same consistency across different surfaces.
  
  → I have the sense that the paint is controlling me, not the other way around.
  
• Balance of time. What should I be able to accomplish in a 40minute pose, by way of setting a goal?
• Push poses more. try to find the liveliness

Reflective Summary

• Brushwork
  There have been a few “A Ha!” moments through this unit, so far. In this project, it was about brushes. I have been struggling with the lack of spontaneity/life in my brushwork related to drawing. With a pencil, pastel, or charcoal I can get all these interesting expressive marks with varying weight. Not so with brushes. My brushwork was dense. heavy. choked.
  
  Watching a youtube video, I was paying attention to how the artist was holding their brush and the type of brush. What caught my eye was the bristle density on the filbert brush — far far denser than the ones I was using. Mine were cheap store brand brushes, and I could never figure out the ‘weight’ to apply to them. They just splayed everywhere.
  
  Its true that there isn’t some magic tool that will make everything easier. But there certainly are bad tools which make everything harder. I went and picked up some high quality filberts of varying sizes, stood back from the easel and suddenly everything felt better. See my initial sketch in the linear painting (link)
  
• Sequencing
  I need to write up a little reminder list and affix it to my easel. Back to front. Tone the surface before starting to draw. Do all the underpainting, before finishing an area. etc etc. I get too caught up in wanting to get to the drawing and see the image form, that I forget the steps that make that easier.
  
• Paint consistency
  I have been struggling with mixing the paint to the right consistency. Its either too soupy, or too stiff, and I haven’t yet gained the intuition of what is needed at any given stage.
  
  In Gaby, Abstracted I focused on working with very thinned paint until I had all the base colours in place, and all lines worked out. Then, I layered thicker paint above that. I’m not entirely pleased with the how I managed the paint, but I did manage to not “race ahead” to thicker paint before the whole painting was ready for it.
  
• Placing Colour
  One painting does not a breakthrough make. However, I completely changed my approach to palette, mediums, and brushwork in Yoni in Yellow, and I am really happy with the results. Practice will bring more facility with this.

Quick Navigation Links:

• Drawing the Human Figure
  • Paint Application Experiments
• Linear Figure Study
  • Study of Gaby
  • Gaby, Abstracted
• Tonal Figure Study
  • Yoni in Yellow
  • Yoni Study 2
• Influences

Exercise: Drawing the Human Figure

I usually work in contour, so I added in pastel to try to break out of some linear thinking and get into tone a bit more. I attend virtual life drawing sessions nearly every weekend, so I have a good opportunity to experiment.

Exercise: Linear Figure Study

Picking up my sketches from a session with the model Gaby, I decided to repeat in paint what I had done in conté. I liked the fluid lines, and movement, and wanted to challenge myself to recreate that.

Following a realization about the brushes I was using (far too floppy), I was able to dig into the painting in a much more confident manner. I again neglected to tone the paper first, which is frustrating. I need to post a reminder list.

From here, I got interested in identifying lines and seeing what I can do with dramatically simplifying everything. This came about from looking at Kandinsky. I wanted to keep the idea of a background, so I taped in a frame for the figure to interact with.

The pink fleshy tone is a bad choice. It is disquieting. I like the windowing effect, but I think a different hue would be appropriate. Top left reminds me of Keith Haring’s work, though I’m unsure why — There isn’t much similarity

It is interesting how much movement some of these have, and how the pose seems radically different depending on how I placed the lines. Top Right looks almost like someone running towards the right hand side, head forward.

Gaby, Abstracted

I liked the final one (lower right), and repeated the effort, larger. I switched the frame to a background rectangle, to suggest the wall that Gaby was posing against.

I wanted the background wall to be a bit more varied in tone, though it isn’t quite coming through. I wanted to use colour to give it a hint of dimensionality, and have a warm-cool transition across its surface, but without really jumping forward. You can sort of see that, but I need to rethink how to achieve this.

This was a fun exercise, though I’m unsure where I’d take it from here.

Exercise: Tonal Figure Study

I’m working from a photo set published by the model, taken during a session with a professional painter. They’re all very well lit, with interesting contrast and challenging poses. The leg in front — bent under itself — is what drew me to this particular reference.

A sketch of model Yoni. I chose to do this sketch using one of my pigments. In this case, Australian Vivianite that I wasn’t sure I’d ground finely enough. The grainy result gives an interesting texture to the curtains at the back. I altered the contrast of the curtains, a little, to help me define areas without using line. I think this might make an effective under-painting, where aspects of it stay visible.

Another “Ah ha!” moment. I was going back over my assignment 2 feedback, and decided to try a different way of placing down paint. My tutor mentioned that they thought a part of my struggle with paint was how I laid it down, not necessarily how I mixed it.

In reviewing my work, I noted my habit of wanting to blend all lines where there are no hard lines in the subject matter. Here, I tried to work against that grain. I’m quite pleased with the result. I have intentionally not covered the page in colour; I like the juxtaposition though I could perhaps take some areas further.

Constraints I placed on myself:

• Avoid blending on the surface.
• Avoid pre-mixing all the colours — work on the palette.
• Avoid local colour

Since I was working from a reference photograph published by the model, I figured I could repeat myself multiple times. In the second study, I worked from a palette of cad yellow, napthol red, and pthalo blue. this struck me as a good combination to create dull secondary and tertiary colour.

Thoughts:

• Study #2 is less angular, but also appears less muscular.
• I need to spend more time planning the background. This mess was an afterthought to help clean up the contrasts.
• I’m very happy with the colour shift in the face.
• Paint consistency got away from me again: this time too liquid making it difficult to layer/place beside.
• I think I could push the light areas further. They aren’t too bad, but I want more contrast.

Influences

Egon Schiele

Wassily Kandinsky