Just the quickest of updates tonight.  My cast drawing is complete to the point where all that remains is to smoothly fill in the flat gray shapes of the wall and the shadow…work I can easily do while not in front of the cast. Since I still have almost two full weeks to work, I will be starting a new cast drawing tomorrow morning. But don’t worry, I will finish this one in the few spare moments I can find between classes.  Keep in mind, this image is dark because it was taken in such dim light.  I am actually working on white paper.  I promise to get better images once the thing is finished.

As for the figure drawing, I think I am just about ready to start flattening shadows and modeling the form as early as tomorrow.

Here I am, midway through the Summer Intensive drawing workshop, simultaneously amazed at how long it seems I have been here and surprised that two weeks are already gone. I feel right at home in New York.

First, a quick update on the drawings. The cast drawing is still progressing. Seven hours further into the drawing, I still have some work to do smoothing and tuning up the modeling on the light side but I have enough information there now that I felt comfortable pulling out just a hint of the reflected light in the shadows. Man is it ever easy to get carried away at this point. When you stare into the shadow side of the cast long enough, your eyes adjust to the light level and allow you to see far more detail than if you were to focus on the entire cast. It is really tempting to try and draw every little thing. I went back twice and darkened the reflected lights after I had over-stated them. I also had a little free time between sessions that I filled blocking in a little of the wall and cast shadow behind the cast. This photo is a bit grainy, but you get the idea.

On thursday, Jacob did a three hour demo portrait of the figure model which he will use to demonstrate the rendering process next week. It’s really interesting to watch him work. The initial setup seems so rough, and then almost out of nowhere everything coalesces into a beautiful likeness. He has a great trick he uses to keep his eye focused on the somewhat abstract shapes the figure cuts on the picture plane (It can be really difficult to draw what you really see, and not what your brain knows it would see if everything were squared up to your vantage point). Jacob looks for animal and cartoon shapes in the larger forms and shadows, and then works on re-creating those shapes in the drawing. I found this trick not only powerfully effective in the beginning stages of the drawing, but pretty amusing as well. Look for the seahorse head in the shadow formed near the figure’s right armpit in the drawing below as an example. This afternoon, I had three more ours to refine my figure drawing, and began to see the value of the careful setup for myself. It is quite an amazing thing to find that all of the smaller, internal forms fit so perfectly into the larger form of the figure. Normally I have to do quite a bit of difficult re-working at this point to get everything to line up just right, but this time everything just dropped into place. I can only imagine what a difference this would make in a full painting. I have one, maybe two more three hour sessions ahead before I can begin the really fun work of rendering.

Also on Thursday, Sara, Asher and I had the pleasure of meeting up with Danny Grant, a fellow QCFA artist and a student at Jacob Collins’ personal studio ‘The Water Street Atelier’. He was generous enough to take us on a quick tour of the Atelier which is comprised of Jacob’s private studio and a larger adjoining workspace for the students. I loved the feel of the place. The few paintings of Jacob’s I was able too get a glimpse of were incredibly beautiful, and it was unbelievably instructive to get a look at his brushwork and surface finish in person. Great stuff! The student work I saw was impressive enough in its own right. There was something so inspiring about the whole place. I can’t wait to get back to work. That little two-three hour diversion alone made this whole trip worthwhile. Thanks again, Danny.

More soon.

I am midway through my second week of the Summer Intensive drawing course, and I finally have some images to post.

This series shows the progression of my cast drawing, and will give you a little glimpse of the thinking behind the method. In this first image, I have completed the ‘Block-in’ of the cast. I spent roughly 3 hours carefully adjusting the proportions and shapes of this simple drawing until they exactly matched the cast. It is definitely worth spending a little extra time at this stage to make sure everything is just right, because it is a lot harder to make adjustments once the rendering stage begins.

Next I chose a vlue to represent the darkest shadow values for the drawing (I stayed relatively light to allow the background to be drawn in darker), and flattened all of the form and cast shdows to that value. This took nearly 6 hours between carefully picking the exact shadow line and smoothly shading in the area.

So, you may notice that the drawing looks pretty weird at this point. What I have done is to set a value boundary for myself to stay within while rendering the light side of the cast. Nothing will get darker than the flat shadow shape, and nothing can get lighter than the paper. The next step is to work from the shadow line toward the light ’sculpting’ the form from the planes facing away from the main light source into the planes directly facing the light. It is a fairly analytical process, and a lot of fun to use…but it takes a great deal of patience and thought, and a light touch with the pencil. The image below shows my progress as of today.

I have reserved the lightest walue of the white paper for the few highlights that will be dropped in later. Once I finish the modelling of the light side of the cast, I will go into the shadow side and lighten the few areas of reflected light. The highlights come last. Once the entire cast is finished, I can come back and relly mke it pop by drawing in the black wall in he background. Up to this point I have around 21 hours of work in this drawing.

As for the figure drawing half of the intensive, the first week was spent practicing the ‘block-in’ stage of the drawing. Monday, after a few warm-up poses, we began work blocking in the drawing that we will eventually render as completely as the cast drawings. Accurace in the block in is everything, since a bad propotion or off angle at this stage can’t be corrected with even the finest modelling of form. So I am takng it slowly. The drawng below represents 8 hours of work, and I anticipate putting at least another 4-8 in before I begin the process of flattening the shadows and redering the forms. I am really excited though. This will be the finest figure drawing I have ever done. I can’t wait to apply some of these ideas to a painting.

I am thoroughly enjoying myself.  The city is amazing, the other students are a ball to hang out with, and the instructors have been incredibly good, particularly Sam Wisneski who has an unbelievable eye for proportion, and an uncanny knack for finding and explaining solutions to size/proportion issues when drawing from a live model.

My first week here at the Grand Central Academy in Manhattan has been nothing short of amazing. To begin, New York City is an incredible town. I have never been in the city and had no idea what, exactly, to expect. I love it here. Incidentally, for more on Sara’s and my impressions and thoughts on the city, look for Sara’s new blog, Red Rocks in New York City, which should be live in the next few days.

Now to the business of the Academy. I have long been an admirer of the technical skill of Jacob Collins. In my opinion, he is one of the best figure painters working today. I have for the past few years, felt that in order to realize some of my best compositional ideas, I would need to increase my skill at painting the figure. So when I found out about the summer courses offered at the Grand Central Academy (founded by Jacob Collins and instructed by some of his most talented students), I jumped at the chance to get some real training in the Classical Realist style. I have been lucky to have had a lot of great instruction in drawing. My parents were both very supportive of my interest in drawing. My dad was a draftsman and very good at precision drawing. My mother was a school teacher and aspiring artist and was the first person to teach me about shading and modeling form. I was lucky to have good instructors in junior high and high school, and a great instructor, John Edwards, in the illustration program at Utah State University for several semesters. However, as for classical approaches to drawing and painting technique, I have been largely self taught.

For the past week and for the five up-coming weeks, I will have a chance to work with a number of individuals who are incredibly talented and much better trained than I am. My first four weeks I am enrolled in a summer intensive drawing workshop and the following two weeks will be a crash course in painting the figure.

The drawing intensive focuses on two aspects of classical figure drawing: accurate capture of form, gesture, and proportion, and high detail form rendering technique. So the past five days have been split between 3-4 hour figure drawing sessions and 3-4 hour cast drawing sessions. For the figure drawing portion, we are working from a live model and have been moving between five minute and three hour poses. The instruction has been centered around accurate capture of proportion and gesture. This coming Monday, we will begin work on a figure drawing which will take these ideas to a fully rendered finish over the remaining three weeks of the course. For the cast drawing portion, we are working on drawings from plaster casts of sculpture. The idea is to master the evaluation of form and value, shape, plane and line, and the rendering skills that will be used in the final figure drawings. I started a drawing of the mouth area of Michaelangelo’s David that will take me most of the entire four week workshop to complete.

Up to this point I have nothing substantial to post image-wise. Next week I will be posting images of the progress of my cast drawing, some examples of the techniques used in capturing the figure, and progress on my final figure drawing.

For now, I can say this: if I thought I was patient and had any attention for detail before, this group of artists has completely redefined both terms for me. I am extremely excited about the implications for my future work.

For those of you who are interested, you can see the work of my instructors online. There is no better place to start than Google. Some of the artists have their own sites, while some are online only through the sites of their representing galleries. Only a limited example of their works can be seen on the Grand Central Academy site. For the drawing intensive the instructors are: Jacob Collins, Camie Davis, Sam Wisneski and Nicholas Hiltner. I have also has the pleasure of attending three drawing sessions with Travis Schlaht and Edward Minoff. The instructor for the Figure Painting course is Douglas Flynt.

More to come…

Steenuil is the name of this little owl. Also called the ‘Little Owl’ or ‘Athene Noctua’, it is believed to be the species of owl depicted on gold ‘Athena’ coins from ancient Greece. I thought it would be an appropriate choice for this composition.

I just finished painting this little guy. As I mentioned, this is the first animal I have ever included in a painting. I really like the way it turned out.

The Athena painting is moving along…though not quite as quickly as I had hoped.  Last week I was able to get the sky finished, and just about complete the owl.

Incidentally, this owl is the first animal I have ever included in a painting.  Not exactly as satisfying as human figure, but still quite fun to paint. 

I leave for New York and the Grand Central Academy this coming Saturday.  I will post any progress I make on the painting before I skip town, but it isn’t likely to be considerable.  I will, however, be blogging regularly on the goings-on at the Academy, and posting images of whatever it is they have me working on.