Tidepool: The Surge

It’s been good to stretch myself out on this large  (unframed size 28 x 36″) Tidepool piece, the first of what may become a series. Painting the unpaintable is what it felt like,.

I relied only on a fairly rough oil sketch and some pencil ideas for the design, which is what most of the painting ended up being about.  From there it’s been a matter of  adjusting things until they looked close to the way I wanted.

I’ve often found it to be a remarkably thoughtful experience to just sit in a place such as this, there are plenty of opportunities to do so in Hawai’i, and take in the indescribable concentration of energy and life that is here.  The colors are wonderful; every sense, really, is able to partake of such an experience, the sound and smells also, even the moisture against one’s skin, and I suppose that it hints at bigger things, questions of creation and how small a thing each one of us, in a sense, is.  All of this beauty and mystery occurs independent of us, whether we notice or not…imagine how much does escape our notice.

 

So now to practical matters.  I have a couple days to finish work on the frame before it gets hung.  Gallery at Ward Centre, after Friday the 29th, it will be on display. Come see.

 

Public Exposure at the Honolulu Museum of Art

I was invited to do a 2-3 hour demonstration of portrait drawing at the Honolulu Museum of Art’s “Art After Dark” event last week.

I look forward to the opportunity to get out in public; it’s good to check in with the world, and let them see what the process looks like. Among other benefits, the experience of being exposed to the unfiltered criticism of anyone who cares to say something is a healthy thing. And  as it turned out people were quite kind in their remarks, making it a very pleasant affair for myself and my model Sarah, who also posed for the pastel profile I posted a month ago.

Sarah and I hard at work.

I don’t get to do these often enough, and considering that most of my day-to-day easel time is usually landscape oriented, I’d like to make more room for portrait work from the model.

 

A Profile in Pastel

 

I thought I’d start the New Year with something from the end of the old.   This is the last piece I did as a pastel demonstration in the Drawing and Painting the Portrait class I teach, and it’s been nestled in the flat files for a couple weeks for safekeeping until I get a frame made for it.

The model, Sarah, is an artist herself, and the granddaughter of the distinguished teacher and painter Snowden Hodges.  We did this over about 4 sessions, if I recall, which was just about right.

 

S.H. in Profile, pastel on Canson paper, 16 x 20″

Sarah has agreed to be my subject for a drawing demonstration I’m doing at Art After Dark on the 25th of January at the Honolulu Museum of Art.

It will be a very active affair overall, I’m told that 1000 + visitors can easily pass through the doors of the Museum that night, but  Sarah and I are  promised safe haven in the very lovely Mediterranean Courtyard, and it will be  a  pleasure to spend the 3 hours drawing Sarah and providing some insight into the process for interested guests.

 

 

 

 

 

Portrait Head-Marty part 2

Still at it, we had another session with the model for 3 hours, where I immediately went after a shape that was wrong on the forehead, corrected the lay in of the ear, and spent the remainder of our time working on half tones and some drawing.  Began to add some indications of the features, delaying that as long as possible to prepare the underlying work.

The images are a bit overexposed here, washed out, something happens in the translation from Iphoto that I’ve yet to figure out.

Never underestimate the power of fatigue on one’s judgement at the end of a session, everything can look wrong at 9:30 PM.  So far, I’m feeling confident about this one, now that it’s a day behind me.

Lay-in for portrait head

Quick post from my portrait class. The lay-in is going well, edges deliberately soft at this point, and any problems with the painting are already most likely present. The only trick is to see them now, before the acorn becomes a tree.

 

12 x 16″ linen on board. Straight oil paint, no medium except a small amount of liquin mixed into the flake white #1 to make it short enough to manipulate. Big brushes, step back for each stroke. lay it on with intention in color and value and placement. Scrape down anything that’s not working.

Always be preparing for the next sitting.

About that Figure in Watercolor Workshop!

No photos, no images….frankly, we were working so happily and busily that I never took the time to shoot anything.

But the workshop was successful beyond my expecations, the response afterwards has been positive, and I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to help so many people.  And the best part was that what was beyond my expectations was the attitude of the participants!  To a person, they worked as only the inspired do. I’m very proud of each of the 13 who attended.  Hard to quantify such an experience, but we will be repeating this workshop again, so if interested, send me an email and I ‘ll get you on the advance list for next time!

Here’s some of the advice that surfaced:

Be a painter first, a watercolorist second.

Suggest, don’t explain.  The word “Suggest” is printed indelibly on the face of my own watercolor palette.

Draw from models, memory, imagination, and draw in the streets.

Dry in the lights, wet in the shadows (“When you paint light, you paint form, when you paint shadow, you paint stmosphere.”).

Art never will come to you, you must always make the first move. 

So chew on these thoughts, work in your sketchbooks constantly, and  remember to be always looking, always designing, seeking fluency, and willing to work. 

 

11 x 14″ Practice sheet from the workshop…heads constructed from a skull, and varied for direction, gender, and expression.  Drawn and painted from imagination.  Great way to study, and fun.

Diminuendo

I began to lay-in something new in the studio over the weekend, a painting constructed from painted studies and my own imagination/recollections. Very liberating and fun after my last outdoor piece, which required a lot of physical effort and direct response to natures’ quirky comings and goings, what I call “chasing the light”  for lack of a better description.

Most every plein-air sketch painted after the sun begins to wane will suffer from an under-exposed look. The darks, when later viewed in normal light, will appear weaker than you painted them and there can be a bit of a washed out, timid look to the color, which is simple to understand because in those circumstances the artist is making decisions while painting in what amounts to a darkening studio.

If you want to understand this better, go into a dining room with one of those dimmer switches on the overhead light.  Look at a white object, say a dinner plate, in full light on the table and then gradually begin to turn the light down 30%.  The white object is still a white object, but it’s not white anymore, it’s a gray of some sort, and 30% darker from where you started. So are all the other tones.  This is going in the direction of low-key painting, where the lightest lights and subsequent supporting tones are all subdued, the edges soften, and the darks cluster into shapes and  silhouettes.

For that reason, it’s important for me to study the effects of early evening light with the idea that I’ll be replicating them mostly from memory later.

 

untitled, 18 x 24″, hand-primed linen mounted on panel

I have a number of small early-evening sketches that are adequate to remind me of the effect I want in this painting, but I know I can’t rely on them completely.  So, for this piece I get to dream and recall those precious times alone after I finish working outdoors on a late afternoon piece, when my light effect is gone and energy spent, and I’m just in that envelope of late-dayness, where you finally put everything aside and you are simply glad to be there.

The composition itself is a collection various experiences cobbled together, a tree or two from one place, a cliff from another.  Let’s just keep that between ourselves, though.

I foresee thin and thick paint built up in quiet shape-touches of broken color for this. A rich surface.  I hope I can do it, and I hope it will be beautiful.

 

 

Always Drawing

We had our final Summer class at the Academy this last week, and because I have some serious drawing aficionados in our group, I wanted to sit with them and work out a portrait head from start to finish.

Lee, a last-minute life-saver of a model, came in unknown to me and quickly became a favored male head to draw and paint.  Lee sits cheerfully and  as unflinching as the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and we had six hours to make something happen.

Carbon pencil on white drawing paper, 11 x 14″

I used five grades of  Wolff’s carbon pencils (HH, B, 2B, 4B, 6B) on a sheet of regular Strathmore drawing paper, with a little eraser work at the end. I worked seated rather than standing so that I could be looking up at him slightly, he has an aristocrat’s head and it was a good decision.

 I can’t overstate how much I see regular drawing practice helping my outdoor work, and vice versa.  I’m very happy and fortunate to have both opportunities on a regular basis.