The laurel wreath is finished.  I’m considering painting the robes next, since I have good scrap for them, and their final color will most likely  have a dramatic effect on my color choices while painting the background elements.

…to the laurel wreath.  Obviously I had a little trouble with reflected light while shooting this photo, but as you can still make out, I’m about half way finished.  It’s so good to have real scrap to paint from.

I’m still test driving the color-string palette layout, and I’m still a fan.  For the leaves, I mixed up a neutral string, a yellow-green string, a green string and a section of blue-greens.  I also kept a little burnt umber, yellow ochre and ivory black on hand for good measure.

Once I complete the wreath, I’ll move on to the marble wall behind Athena.  I admit I’m stalling a bit on the wall while I track down some sort of decent reference material.

As per recent comments on my last post, I have taken back one toe from the owl.

A few small brush strokes for one painter, one giant leap for ornithology.

As many of you may have noticed, and one of you actually commented, the completion of the crest of Athena’s helmet left her owl feeling a bit one-legged.  Now, in the reference photo for the owl, it is perched on a branch which has enough girth and texture that it seems obvious the other talon must be gripping onto the back of the branch somewhere.  This is obviously not the case while the owl is perched on the helmet.  So, I did what I could to grow a new right for for the wee Athene Nocturne owl…a daunting task for the bio-genetics-engineering disciplines, but a matter of a few brush strokes for an oil painter.  Hey, I could even add a third leg…or a hand…but of course I’ve never billed myself as a surrealist.  I think the bird looks much more comfortable now.

Sometimes it takes a while to get back into the swing of things after a long vacation from normal life. But, after returning from New York, unpacking, dealing with car registrations and other such domestic issues, painting the kitchen and simultaneously relocating my studio to a larger, much better lit, more central location in the ex-dining room, I am finally back to work on the Athena painting. First area of attention: Athena’s helmet:

My reference material for the helmet I found online in a database on Greek armor. It was quite small, and lit from a slightly more direct angle than I needed it to be for the composition, but I like the overall design of the thing. I did what I could to adjust the lighting, changed the shape just a little and added the decorations along the brow line to make it feel a more worthy of a war-goddess. I also added some subtle evidence of battle damage, as I picture Athena as the type to jump right into the fray along with her soldiers, assuming of course it was for a worthy cause.

It’s also nice to have a place for that poor owl to perch instead of floating eerily in the air like it has been for the past two months.

And here’s a photo of my newest toy. Yeah, it’s a palette. A seemingly ridiculously huge palette. But it’s awesome. I found a Richeson palette online through Utrect that was actually made for left handed artists. May I say, it’s about damned time someone addressed that issue. I took a coping saw and some sandpaper to the thing and adjusted it to fit the shape of my right arm and the sweep of my brush wielding arm (yes, the left). Then I painted the business side a lovely mid-tone neutral gray and then applied 10 coats of shellac and linseed oil for a nice French-polished finish. It’s perfectly balanced, comfortable to hold..even while simultaneously using my mahl stick, and has an almost unlimited amount real-estate available for all kinds of color mixing madness.

As you can see, I’m trying out the color string idea we used in Doug Flynt’s figure painting course. I really like it . And the gray palette makes judging colors so much easier.

Finally, here’s a shot of the entire Athena canvas as of today.

So I am finally getting around to writing one last post about my adventures in New York this summer. Yes, I am the master of procrastination when it comes to writing. There is way too much to write in a single post. Sara hit the just the right tone in her NY blog wrap-up. She can say a lot with an economy of language, whereas I just tend to ratchet up the word count and hope something coherent remains after the dust settles. Here goes.

I’ll begin with the promised final images of my various projects. Pictures, after all, are more my strong suit than writing. I spent the better part of an hour this afternoon messing around with the settings on my camera, adjusting the position of the drawings and painting, moving in and out of the sun, whatever I could think of to get the most accurate photos. I’m pretty sure my neighbors must all think I’m insane.

My first four weeks in New York were spent getting back to basics in the Summer Drawing Intensive. Half of each day we drew from a live model and the other half from plaster casts. Wanting to get the absolute most I could from the experience, and being the slightest bit of an obsessive-compulsive workaholic when I get really into a project, I put in a few extra hours and was able to get most of the way through two cast drawings. I could easily have spent the entire time on this first one. But as long as I had access to the critiques and comments of the instructors I decided to leave some of the areas of pure busy-work (filling in the wide expanses of flat gray wall) unfinished and move on. Well, several hours of busy work back home later, I actually did finish the thing.

My main reason for moving on to a second cast while still at the GCA was to experiment with compression of value. This is a concept I have dealt with in a glancing sort of way before, though I have been referring to it as saving values. The best example in my past work is ‘First Heat’. In order to have the molten metal appear to be glowing white-hot, all the other colors in the painting had to be kept below a certain value level, saving the pure white for the metal. I was on the right track, but didn’t really identify a general rule for what I was doing. The minute the instructors began describing the idea of compressing value, it clicked. That sort of thing happened a lot in the six weeks I was in New York. Compression of value, as I have briefly described before, simply means taking the full range of lights and darks you observe in your subject and compressing it to fit in the much smaller range of lights and darks you can produce with your available materials (in this case an HB pencil and white paper). Anyway, halfway through the first cast drawing, I began to get a feel for how the whole compression thing worked and started thinking it would be fun and instructive to take it a little further. So on this second cast drawing, I locked in the darkest shadows at a mid-tone gray, compressing the values of the drawing almost twice as much as in the first. I didn’t have time to finish the drawing, and it has proven to be enormously difficult to photograph, but here it is.

During the half of the day I wasn’t working from the casts I was working from a live model. I covered the specifics in earlier posts, but never got a really great photo. This one isn’t perfect, but it’s much better than the earlier ones. There are a number of things I don’t like about this drawing, other than the fact that I didn’t have time to finish it. For one thing, I drew it too small which, compounded by the roughness of the paper I was working on, seriously curtailed my ability to control smaller details or smooth out the surface finish as much as I would have liked. The other big issue was that, while I learned an unbelievable amount about turning form and conceptualizing the play of light over a surface, I neglected another issue I have previously circled around through observation but never really identified. Doug Flynt mentioned it a few weeks later, and it has to do with the drop off of light. It turns out that the gradation from light to dark across a curved surface does not occur in a linear fashion. Instead, it drops off slowly at first, and then faster and faster as you approach the shadow terminator line. Basically, as a plane turns away from the light, increasingly fewer photons per square inch are able to strike the surface and illuminate it. This is the critical detail that I sort of knew from experience, but never really quantified. Anyway, in concentrating on smoothly turning the form and integrating all the other new rendering ideas from the cast drawing sessions, I under-played the drop-off of light. The result is a low-contrast and flat, if meticulously rendered figure drawing. On the plus side, I learned more in the three weeks I worked on this drawing than in the three years previous.

My last two weeks were spent in a figure painting workshop taught by Douglas Flynt. Again, I’ve posted on many of the specifics previously, but this is a far better image of my painting. I really expected the paint application technique to be the useful thing I would learn the whole summer. Instead, as interesting as it was (see earlier posts on the whole no-blending thing), the introduction of the concept of chroma was much more interesting. Value is a fairly straightforward property of any color, as is hue. Chroma, or relative intensity of color, is a little less so. As with some other ideas, I have been circling around the issue of chroma control as long as I have been mixing colors. But, instead of identifying it as a distinct and controllable aspect of color, I have vaguely dealt with it, like many artists do, by referring to colors as being ‘warmer’, or ‘cooler’, or ‘redder’, or ‘greener’, or (and this is the one that gets so many painters into trouble) ‘muddier’. Next summer, I hope to be able to go back to New York for a two week seminar on color theory by Graydon Parrish…a true geek-level, in-depth look at the subject. Already though, I have a lot of new information to work with. The most interesting applications are largely conceptual and have to do with determining what is causing a particular area of color to appear higher or lower in chroma than would be expected, and whether or not raising or lowering the chroma of the colors used to paint that area would give the desired effect. Here are two examples. The first has to do with form light vs. highlight. Form light, as I briefly discussed in a previous post, is the general scattered light bouncing off of an object that gives your eye information about its shape and color. Form light is the dominant form of reflected light seen when looking at a matte object. Form light always increases in value as an object turns toward or moves closer to the light source, and colors in form light situations increase in chroma as they increase in value. Highlight, on the other hand, is a pure reflection of the light source off of a gloss or more reflective surface. It tells you more about the color of the light than the color of the object. It is localized, and is directly affected (as is not the case with form light) by the angle between the viewer, the object and the light source. Specifically, it always reflects off of a surface at the same angle as it comes in on (like a pool ball off of a side rail). The important thing here is that form light stays the same regardless of your position while the highlight moves as your vantage point moves. Since reflected light maintains the color of the light source, and since most familiar light sources (sunlight, incandescent bulbs, etc.) are relatively low in chroma, areas of an object that appear lighter in value due to highlight appear lower in chroma. This sounds ridiculously nit-picky and obscure, but makes all the difference in the world when painting surfaces like skin which can vary considerably in sheen, in local color and in translucence. Before, if an area looked lighter, I would have most likely just painted it lighter. Now, when looking at a figure and trying to decide what color to use to paint a particular lighter-looking area, figuring out if the increase in value I am seeing is due to form light or highlight can help me make a much better, more effective decision. If I lighten the paint and lower the chroma, it reads like reflected light. If I lighten the value and increase the chroma, it reads like form light. Subtle, but very powerful. A dusty object is another example. As the object turns away from your line of sight, you see more dust particles per square inch on the surface. Dust is typically low in chroma (gray) so as the object turns away from you you perceive a loss of chroma. That’s why the object looks dusty. Again, the real point of this whole tedious discussion is that I learned more about color during this two week course (only four days of which involved painting) than in the two years previous.

Another big idea that got a lot of attention from all of the instructors was the integration of the conceptual school of painting and the optical school. The conceptual school is concerned with understanding an object and then drawing what you understand. DaVinci is a good example. Even his line-work is more about explaining the form of the object than about creating a convincing illusion. Knowledge of anatomy, and rules of thumb like the one eye’s space between the eyes or a figure being six heads tall are examples of conceptual figure drawing tools. The optical school is newer, and has all but occluded the conceptual school. The impressionists, and more contemporary schools of figure painting and illustration are examples. The optical school is concerned only with painting or drawing exactly what you see, completely uninformed by what you know about your subject. Tricks like looking at your drawing in a mirror, turning a reference photo upside down, looking for abstract or animal shapes in shadows, etc. are all optical school tools. Both schools have their own strengths and weaknesses. The conceptual school is prone to exaggeration of features, especially psychologically important ones like eyes, mouths, hands, head size etc. or even putting in detail that isn’t even visible based on prior experience or on what is expected. Young children are pure conceptual artists. The optical school, on the other hand is prone to optical illusion, exaggerations due to contrasting colors or values, and the sensitivity of human eyes (backed up by the enormously powerful analytical engine of the brain) extracting and exaggerating detail in shadow areas by adjusting the pupils or compensating for ambient light intensity and color on the fly in a way that paint can never re-create. The optical school is also limited to painting exactly what is seen without any sort of stylization or idealization. The group of artists at the GCA are working to integrate the two schools. In general, they use the techniques of the optical school to set up size relationships and proportions and identify relative values and colors. They use the tools of the conceptual school to render form, inform their decisions of color and value, and idealize a subject based on what is more beautiful or effective on the canvas. Most importantly, they use all of the information they have available, both conceptual and visual. Interestingly enough, though all of the instructors would absolutely cringe at the idea, I suspect that integration of these two ways of seeing and rendering objects will eventually lend itself quite well to my using photographs as reference…as long as I can identify and keep in mind the limitations of my camera. I won’t pretend that there aren’t many distinct advantages to painting from life, but there are serious limitations too, especially when dealing with compositions involving multiple figures, complex backgrounds or active poses. Besides, my current studio space is way too small for models to lounge around in while I’m trying to work.

Of course there are a lot of little things I came away with as well, like how to do an oil transfer and the value of keeping an arsenal of spring-clamps around to hold a canvas steady or for use as a convenient maul stick support.

So, I’m really glad I went. I learned way more than I expected. I met a lot of interesting, fun, talented people who can chat about anything from food to comic books to pigment chemistry to how long they spend getting to know a sheet of high end drawing paper before they take it home with them (some artists are easier than others) . And New York was awesome.

Thanks to Jacob Collins, Sam Wisneski, Nicholas Hiltner, Camie Davis, Doug Flynt and everyone else at the GCA for the incredible instruction and inspiration. Thanks to all the fellow students, both in the workshops and the full time courses for the camaraderie. Thanks to Jocelyn, Garrit, Guy and Zoey for the great place to stay. Thanks to the people of New York and New Jersey for being so fascinating and friendly. Thanks to Dianne, Sal and Allegra for a lovely evening in Williamsburg. Thanks to Peter and Piper for an excellent few days in Pennsylvania. Thanks to Sara and Asher for tagging along, keeping me sane, sharing the whole experience, putting up with my endless ramblings about the course-work and for making New York so much more like home. And thanks to all of you for reading.

Today was the last day of the figure painting workshop…and of my summer GCA adventures. More on that in a bit. For now, I have a pretty good image of my painting…or at least of what I managed so finish. There’s a bit of scattered reflection off of the brush strokes, but that’s to be expected with paint in such a range of dryness. I was able to get the hair roughly painted, finish the portrait, and work my way down the arm a little further. I am still working on a few chroma control issues, and will need a lot of practice before I am truly comfortable with this method of paint application, but I am beginning to get a feel for it’s potential.

The section of completed painting above represents around 14 hours of painting time…actually not all that bad considering the steep learning curve of the painting technique and the newly added concept of chroma (something I have been sort of dancing around for a few years but never really identified).

I will be posting a Grand Central Academy Summer Workshop wrap-up next week complete with final, well-lit photos of all three drawings and the painting, and my general impressions of the whole experience.

Stay tuned…

It is ridiculously late, so I will keep this update shot and sweet.  I spent the day working on the face and playing around with the chroma in a few little areas I had already finished. 

Only one day left.  Tomorrow I will try and finish the head and hair, and possibly work a little more on the arm. 

Now I’m off to bed.

I started the day off working on the shoulder. Things went much more smoothly than yesterday, especially chroma related decisions…and I realized early on that I would have to rework the neck and parts of the chest to bring up the chroma in a few areas. By the end of the day I started to get a little better at judging hues and chroma and things sped up a bit. I even managed to get some work done on the ribs. This method of painting takes a huge amount of concentration, and it’s surprising how mentally exhausted you feel after full day of it.

I’m having two canvas-related issues that I will be sure to address next time I paint a figure. The most annoying is the color of the toned canvas. It’s just the weirdest yellowish color, and it makes relating the flesh tones really confusing. I nice neutral ground such as I am used to using would be much better. I finally resorted to chopping in a little section of gray by the chest to keep me thinking straight. I am also having a little trouble with the dark lines from the charcoal transfer showing through the paint…particularly in areas with a lot of earth tones (which are relatively transparent) and not a lot of titanium white (which adds opacity). Doing the transfer with burnt umber would help with that issue, as would a simple under-painting. I’ll have to do a little experimenting with slightly different approaches once I get back to my studio.

Tomorrow: The face?

Today, after six days of careful prep work and research in the form of drawings and value study, I was finally able to start working on the actual painting. the day began with the mixing of the colors. I am already quite used to spending 30 to 40 minutes mixing a palette prior to beginning work on a specific area, but we took things in a slightly different direction today. First I mixed a string of neutral colors ranging from black to white. I added a touch of burnt umber and raw umber to the ivory black to kill its bluish tones before mixing it with titanium white to give the various values. Next, I mixed a string of yellows, a string of oranges and a string of reds, each ranging from darkest value to lightest in as full a chroma as possible. From these strings, I would then be able to easily mix a color at any value and at any range from yellow to red. By adding a neutral of the same value I could then drop the chroma from full intensity to lowest. Total color control…if a little on the complex side. Still, it beats a blind guess and then a lot of adjustment. Here is a shot of my palette at the end of the day:

The basic procedure was, in theory, extremely simple. For a given area to be painted, mix the lightest value and adjust it for hue and chroma. Next, mix the darkest value, again adjusting for hue and chroma. Then proceed in small increments from the darkest to lightest values, mixing first value, then hue, then chroma and applying each successively color to its proper place to render the form of the area being painted. In practice, the process proved to be more complicated. So much careful thought and analysis is required for each color decision. It took me a while to get a handle on it, but by halfway through the day it was getting easier. The hardest part was avoiding the urge to ‘cheat’ a little by blending colors together on the canvas to adjust for bad color decisions. the poster study proved to be invaluable as a reference to check the values of colors before applying them to the canvas. Below are two photos of today’s work. First, a shot of the whole canvas showing the poster study secured up in the corner for easy reference:

And second, a closeup of the area I was able to finish today. I ran a quick calculation, and once I account for the hour long lunch break, the five minute breaks for the model every twenty minutes and the two fifteen minute breaks (we call them long breaks…they seem interminable when you are in the zone), I estimate I have around four, maybe four and a half hours of actual painting time on any given day. I have three such days left before the end of the workshop.

Keep in mind, I haven’t made any attempt to color correct these images or to adjust their contrast/brightness. This is how the images came off the camera. There is, of course, some serious distortion both in the color range and in the contrast, but they give an OK idea of what is going on.

As always, more tomorrow.