Studio Update:

This last week I have been working on Lovers Jumping and Venus. One of the most trying and difficult things for me to do as an artist is to balance my on going projects. At the drop of a brush I could focus every single second of my time on my principal works and not look up until there is no money for rent or models. And I have done that not just a few times. But New York is great place to be and I want to solidify my place here. With that in mind I am enjoying balancing dividing my time between principal works, smaller singular works, and exploratory drawings. As well as, developing my art classes and taking pro-active career steps.

Kimberly the model in Lovers has been visiting me for a few days and I have taken that opportunity to further the expression of the woman's face. If you examine art history books you will rarely find a smile and rarer too a smile that feels natural--in my experience with drawing and painting the figure I would say that a successful smile is the most difficult specific detail to do in the art of painting. There are a few reasons for this. On the model's face the feeling of the smile quickly wears off and becomes a grimace. Another is that a beautiful smile is extremely demanding of exact proportions, fractions of an inch off can destroy the affect. Ugliness in contrast gains more character the more distorted the figure becomes (sometimes its hard to tell with that is due to incompetence or on purpose.)

Kimberly has been great posing for this. She pauses, relaxes, and then goes into the upper body pose with outstretched arms and a great smile with flashing eyes and holds that for some seconds--and I quickly make one or two marks of highlight or shadow.

I have not painted in the very simple small dock or the water and sky that is the background for them.

Kimberly will not be available for some time so I made a few studies that don't have anything to do with drawing but with reminding myself about the spatial relationships and hierarchy of lights and darks. Here I will show you what I mean.

This is a photocopy of the original drawing study for Lovers, in which I made pen notations. To express visually all the excitement and energy of these two jumping its imperative to have every joint and form vibrate perfectly in spatial relationship to all the other joints and forms. Its too complex to go into how I do that but before I can manipulate the paint accordingly I must know the depth of distance every landmark is from me.

Her right foot is #1 in closeness. Notice that within the circle of her foot I mark her second toe as 1, then the ball of her foot 2, and then the heel 3.

Her left hand is #1.5, her left foot #2, and etc.

Of course, I may have no problem painting with everything falling into place, but there is nothing like the nightmare of not being sure. This is a very good reminder of the inter-relationships of the forms.

In this one I am looking for the 3 darkest areas.

Of the two figures she will be the lightest object in the painting and extremely light at that. Since my original drawing was done on white paper there are many indistinguishable white areas in the drawing. That won't do for painting, I have to clearly program my hierarchy of lights.

I know seeing this stuff will mostly likely overwhelm your comprehension but just having this saturated knowledge around will be very helpful if I come across a painting block, and then I will access these studies and  recall "oh, yes, her hand is the lightest thing in the whole painting. Well, then! Make it the lightest thing!"

I have had to re-organize my background colors and lights and darks in Venus. One of the almost impossible things to teach or show is how when I mark an area of the rock with a color it affects the color of everything else including the color of the woman. I have been trying to create more depth with the island behind her and make sure that whatever color I am using compliments her color. Its like trying to control fire!

That's it for the June Studio Update. If you are not receiving my monthly email please sign up for my online tutorial series. And do forward this page onto a friend that loves art and would enjoy seeing a fresh perspective on art.

Cheers,

Michael

Sign up for Mini-Tutorials and Art Updates