Coming across this beautiful old plaster cast kindled the desire to revisit the discipline of cast drawing. It’s a training exercise for refining one’s ability to see truthfully. The cast itself is a large one from the old days, over three feet across, and molded originally from the South Frieze of the Parthenon, if I’m not mistaken.
Parthenon cast, oil 22 x 24″
I haven’t really touched anything like this in many years, but I do enjoy the discipline and so happily devoted a number of Friday afternoons at the Honolulu Academy school to making this study, for me a rare opportunity. Tall windows cast daylight on the cast and my canvas, which was a good 12′ or more away from my vantage point. The softness of the daylight, as opposed to the hardness of artificial light, comes across in the painting I think.
I decided to approach this as I’d paint any other subjects, because I wanted to see what I’d learned since the early nineties (when I last did this) so I allowed myself to be selective to the degree of “finish” in the study. The background is appropriately sketchy, and the paint is handled as I would in a landscape or portrait, with a varied handling reflecting my effort to capture the true, big look of the object in space.
Well worth the time.
2 Comments
Cast drawing is one of the most valuable exercises that I have done, and I highly recommend it. It trains both mind and eye in so many ways and leads to improvements overall in one’s art.
Thanks for your comments, Linda. It’s a good thing that this sort of practice is back again, and until a student has worked through a cast drawing themselves, I don’t think they can appreciate the radical and rich effect it has on our awareness of visual reality. I also had the opportunity to make an Ecorche years ago, and that was an eye opener as well.