Tag: Art

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Drawing Faces Figure Drawing People Sketchbook Pages

Life Drawing Studio and Portrait Sketches

Sketching people drawing the model during a "boring" pose
Sketching people drawing the model during a “boring” pose

I love my Friday figure drawing studio and our wonderful models. In the morning I draw the figure during the shorter poses and then switch to a portrait for the final hour-long pose after lunch. In the sketch above I decided to draw the crowded room and other artists instead of the model since I had an obstructed view of what struck me as a boring pose.

Fallon, charcoal on toned paper, life-size.
Fallon, charcoal on toned paper, life-size.

Fallon is one of my favorite models. She is so beautiful and strong, with unique features and she always brings interesting costumes and music to play for us.

Brian, charcoal on toned paper, life size
Brian, charcoal on toned paper, life size

Brian is very unusual looking, tall, muscular and lean, with prominent facial bone structure and a small, pouty (not potty!) mouth. I think I went too far with the dark charcoal as there’s too much contrast with the lighter areas but I think I did get a likeness, despite the clumsy shading and unfinished hair.

20160226_Life_007
Brigitte, charcoal and conté on tan paper, life-size.

I thought the drawing above was going great until I saw it on my camera’s screen as a mirror image and it looked all wrong. I tried to fix it, but couldn’t figure out what the problem was. She looks so sour and grumpy and really was just a little sleepy from the long pose.

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Faces Oil Painting People People at Work Portrait

Jeff the Handyman (and inspiring model)

JR Handyman #3 Final, oil on DuraLar, 12x9"
JR Handyman #3 Final, oil on DuraLar, 12×9 inches, 2016

When Jeff the Handyman (who does excellent carpentry and electrical work) came over to look at a job, he was kind enough to let me take his photo for the series I’m painting of people at work in my neighborhood. I tried three times, before and after I started studying head structure and anatomy. With the third study (above) I felt like I’d said what I had to say, with the skills I have at this point, and was ready to move on.

Above is the final study and immediately below are all three attempts in chronological order.

My favorite part of all three above is the sky reflecting on the top of his head. With each attempt my drawing improved a bit. The more I learn, the more I see, and the more I see, the more I know I need to learn!!!. Below are all three studies with work in progress (WIP) steps. I’m not offering the WIP to show how it “should” be done; just the approach I was experimenting with. I am always trying on techniques of other artists I admire but haven’t yet found the approach that “just works” for me.

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Art supplies Drawing Faces Oil Painting Painting People Portrait Portrait Party

Portrait Process: Start to Fail and Start Again

Forest Girl #2-C, Oil Painting on Mylar, 12x8"
Forest Girl #2-C, Oil Painting on Mylar, 12×8″

My first attempt at painting Sylvia, a lovely young Bulgarian architecture student, ended in an abandoned failure, displayed at the bottom of this post in 6 steps. I altered my course for the second attempt (above), starting with a better drawing, and was able to complete the study more successfully. I tried to practice for alla prima painting, not going for a “finished” portrait, even though I painted from her reference photo on Julia Kay’s Portrait Party, instead of from life.

What made the difference between failure and success was that I took the time to make a more accurate drawing first (above). I drew on one side of a sheet of Dura-Lar Matte Film (after first reversing the reference photo in Photoshop) and painted on the other side. Then I turned the sheet over, toned it with a transparent umber stain, and reversed the photo back to normal. That way I had the lines of the drawing to refer to, along with the photo without obliterating the drawing. It’s still visible on the back of the painting and could be traced over onto another sheet of Dura-Lar if I wanted to paint her again from the same drawing.

Below is the failed first attempt, where impatience and hubris led to a quick, sloppy drawing (with the evil thought, “I can always correct the drawing when I paint,” which I need to ignore in the future!). The captions describe what went wrong at each step:

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Art supplies Oil Painting Still Life

Studies from Sadie Valeri’s Alla Prima Still Life Workshop

Avocado and Pear, oil on panel, 10x8"
Avocado and Pear, oil on panel, 10×8″  Available. Click image for purchase information.

I took a wonderful Alla Prima Still Life workshop from Sadie Valeri recently and really enjoyed the class. She is such a generous and knowledgeable teacher. I really appreciate the way she is able to verbalize what she’s thinking as she demonstrates and how organized and thorough her teaching style is. I got this one nearly done before the end of the day and finished it up at home from memory.

Oil on Canson Vidalon Vellum, 8x8"
Lemon Studey, Oil on Canson Vidalon Vellum, 8×8″

We started the day by doing a lemon study on Canson Vidalon Vellum. What a great idea for a painting surface for studies–so much cheaper than using panels or canvases. Taping it to a board with a piece of white or grey paper underneath works great. This was a limited stroke painting, done quickly as a warm up to practice laying in colors in little color chips, side by side.

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Animals Oil Painting Painting Sketchbook Pages

Mika, Formosan Mountain Dog Portrait

Mika, a Formosan Mountain Dog portrait in oil paint on linen panel,, 10x8 in
Mika, a Formosan Mountain Dog portrait in oil paint on linen panel,, 10×8 in

This little cutie was a fun challenge to paint. Below are some steps along the way, including the reference photos that I joined and edited in Photoshop to simplify the background and combine the tops and bottoms of her ears. Her ears were too tall in my first sketch (done in gouache in my journal). I must have added extra length when I assembled the two photos in Photoshop so edited them down to life-size in the painting.

Mika’s owner was happy with the painting and noted that Mika, who is a playful goofball in real life, seems so dignified in the painting. That gave me the idea to ask owners to also provide videos of dogs I’m to paint in the future so I can get a better sense of their personalities. I tried to include some of the family’s garden in Mika’s portrait but I struggled with getting the spring flowers to behave in the background. I painted over them with sky, planning to try them again, but when I sent Mika’s owner a photo of the painting with the sky background, she liked it better that way and so did I.

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Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Crockett’s Funky Main Street

Crockett Main Street, ink and watercolor, 10x8 in
Crockett Main Street, ink and watercolor, 10×8 in

Inspired by a wonderful urban plein air painting workshop and demo by one of my favorite artists, Randy Sexton, I sketched the main street in the funky little town of Crockett that houses his studio, Epperson Gallery and a tattoo parlor. Randy is one of the nicest gentlemen I’ve ever met, as well as a highly skilled and talented painter, and a gifted teacher.

Crockett is home to many oddball characters and funky old bars and shops. When I said I’d love to paint portraits of some of the local denizens he said he’d been doing just that, starting from when a professional model didn’t show up for a figure painting session. He and his fellow artists just popped in to one of the neighborhood dive bars and recruited a regular to come pose for cash and beer.

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Flower Art Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Busby’s Orchid in Sadie’s Footprint Pot

Orchid for Busby in Sadie Footprint Pot, graphite and watercolor, 11x7 in
Orchid for Busby in Sadie Footprint Pot, graphite and watercolor, 11×7 in

For Mothers’ Day my daughter-in-law Brittney gave me this adorable flower-pot that she and her mom decorated with my grandbaby Sadie’s footprints (dipped in paint) as the wings of a butterfly. Then last week a florist delivered a beautiful double orchid plant to me from my veterinarian in memory of my kitty Busby who, sadly, had died the previous week.

The orchids were a perfect match for the Mothers’ Day pot and combining the two helped ease my mind and lift my spirits. I see the orchid and feel sad for Busby and then see the pot and feel happy about little Sadie. It was fun and challenging to draw while trying to keep track of which flower and bud were which.

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Animals Drawing Oil Painting Painting Sketchbook Pages

Leo Take Two: Same Dog, Revised Painting

Leo, Dog Portrait, Take Two, oil on panel, 8x10
Leo, Dog Portrait, Take Two, oil on panel, 8×10

After I varnished Leo’s painting and was going to deliver it to the family that commissioned it, I realized I wasn’t satisfied with the background. I asked for and was granted permission to adjust it. It’s a good thing Leo’s people are very patient: I asked for an extra two weeks but then my dog Millie started having epileptic grand mal seizures and my cat Busby got sick and I was spending more of my time nursing animals than painting them.

Finally, after many visits to the emergency vet hospital, my family vet, and a veterinary neurologist (thank goodness for pet insurance) Millie has stabilized on her meds (no seizures in over a week), and Busby has sadly has passed on to Kitty Heaven. He was a beautiful cat and my remaining kitty Fiona misses him, even though he was a bit of a bully, like big brothers can sometimes be.

Back in the studio I explored how to rework the background. What bothered me was the way the it divided the painting in half vertically and how vague it was. With my realistic approach to the dog, it felt like the background needed more detail so I tried to suggest some of the actual greenery in Leo’s Northern California backyard (see photo below) and added some sky to add depth.

Below, copied from the previous post, are the reference photo and the work in progress before I got to the finished painting above.

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Sketchbook Pages

Leo: A Dog Portrait in Oil and Gouache

Portrait of Leo, Formosan Mountain Dog, oil on panel, 8x10 in
Portrait of Leo, Formosan Mountain Dog, oil on panel, 8×10 in

Leo is the same breed as my pup Millie, a Formosan Mountain Dog (both rescued from the streets of Taiwan), except Leo has dark brindle fur which I found much more difficult to paint than Millie’s blonde fur, especially when working from a photo (at bottom of post) without much variation in light and shadow to help create dimension and volume on a surface that is already so varied and random.

Study for Leo Dog Portrait, gouache on paper, 8x10 in
Study for Leo Dog Portrait, gouache on paper, 8×10 in

Before starting the oil painting I did the above quick gouache study to send to the collector who commissioned the painting to give her a sense of what I was planning. I hadn’t decided yet whether to include their backyard.

Below are a few steps during the work in process and the original photo I worked from.

I got really interested in painting the ferns on the left in the photo but decided to simplify the background, which was attracting my eye more than the doggie. I changed Leo’s fur coloring a bit in the painting based on some additional photo references that showed the fur as being darker and warmer-colored than in this photo. I’m so glad Leo’s people are happy with the painting!

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Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Sketchbook Pages Still Life

EDiM Medley: Days 5, 6, 7

EDiM 5-6-7: Hot, Bristles, Envelope, ink and watercolor, 8x10
EDiM 5-6-7: Hot, Bristles, Envelope, ink and watercolor, 8×10

May 5 was “Draw Something Hot.” I went for the obvious, a cup of hot tea because I like this cup and I was short on imagination and time due to some “first world problems” (iPhone went bad and required way too many wasted hours to restore it).

May 6 was “Something with Bristles.” I wanted to draw the odd, bristly whiskers under my dog’s chin but she wouldn’t hold still long enough. Instead here’s a bristly bottle brush with a bonus soft cotton tip. I bought it to clean something I apparently no longer own since I haven’t used it in years and can’t remember what it was for. I created the bristles by painting in watercolor and then adding white gel pen.

May 7 was “Envelope” and this is the Mothers Day card and envelope I sent to my mom after I sketched it.