Painting Class: A Head of a Time

And another post, coming in just under the wire for the month. And this may not be the last (don't hold your breath though). I have to be honest, this month has seen my art more or less go hang. I'm working on things at work, that while fun also leave me feeling drained of mojo at the end of the day (so there is lots of art, just not the sort of stuff I can share on here). Add to that a little mini-crunch this week and a bad, if short lived, head cold and I have very little sketching done, and very small number of speedpaints. I did finish another painting class at the start of the month though, and that's what I'm posting today (yeah, the title's a bit of a giveaway). If you want to see the previous painting posts then hit the tag at the bottom there and you'll be set.

Right, off we go.

So first up we did two tonal studies, based on white mannequin busts. I had to miss a chunk of the first class due to other commitments, so the first one was done from a photograph on my phone at home. It's actually not utterly terrible if you squint a bit I guess, but it's far too dark, and my orange bounce lights came out green (looking at the photo it's not actually all that close to it either - maybe this is the wrong photo).

I think it took about 80 minutes all told. Not going to sell, or hang in a gallery, but it was a useful learning experience. (all of these are in Acrylic on 8x10 canvas board by the way).

This is the second tonal study. Same head bust as the previous one, but this time in person and from a different angle. The black shape is the silhouette of my easel as I thought it would make for an interesting composition (it was in the way you see?). I was wrong, but it didn't hurt to try it. This time the values are far closer to the actual thing (I forgot to grab a photo this time though). 90 minutes this time.

For the third session Paula's daughter came in and posed for us (Paula McCarty teaches the class incidentally, I've mentioned that in previous posts). I'm not going to post a photo here, so you'll just have to take my word on this being an excellent likeness, if it was actually a painting of Paula's daughter from an alternate dimension where everyone is much uglier than they are in ours. Basically I think I didn't add enough shadow around the eye (although this picture of it does make it look lighter than it is in reality), and I made her nose far too big. You can tell who it's supposed to be (if you know her) but it is neither a good or flattering portrait. I think it took around 85 minutes.

This one took longer than any of the others. Again I couldn't attend the session this week and ended up painting this self portrait at home. I spent about an extra hour on it over the other ones. It's the only painting I thought to take a work in progress shot of, though it's not terribly exciting.

It's not the most accurate portrait; my nose is too long, giving me a bit of a horse face, but it is recognisable, which is a good thing. I discovered that eyes are a lot harder to do with real paint though, and here they look a little flat (though not as bad as in the next portrait).

And this was the one from the final week. This time the mirror was below me, and the lighting much brighter. The initial sketch was much closer to my proportions, but I think I made a bit of a mess of the actual painting. Not the worse thing in the world, and definitely a step forward, especially given that I think this was the shortest of the paintings (about 75 minutes I think). In person the painting is again a little darker, and the blending on the side of my face seems a lit smoother. Strange how hard it is to get decent shots of these - I'll have to look into how to set up better ones if I do more of these (they scan a lot worse than they photograph).

And I think that's it. The class ended a few weeks ago, and I have yet to pick up a brush again (for the reasons mentioned above). Paula has another class coming up in a few weeks, but I only just read the email (gmail had it marked as spam), so it may be too late for me to attend. Must reply to that tomorrow and see if there are any slots left. Anyway, until the next time faithful followers...

Sketching for May/June '13

I've not been terribly good at keeping up on the blogging of late have I (and long term followers will know this is nothing particularly new)? To be honest I've not been terribly great at keeping up on the art either. That's not to say I'm not doing any, but a good chunk of it is for work, so you'll either never get to see it or you won't for a few years. The work stuff is a big learning curve right now, and as a result it's having a knock on to the art-as-hobby area. In all honesty this last week I might have gotten back on the horse properly, but Saints Row IV was out and I was too busy playing to actually draw anything (I did work on it of course, but even so there were plenty of surprises in there I'd somehow missed during development, and I had a blast). Plus it's right in the middle of allergy season, and I hate drawing when everything is slightly blurred from the results.

So yes, the art and the blog have not been my priority of late (there have been other things going on too, but I won't bore you with them), but now SR4 is done and dusted and there's less pure knowledge being assimilated at work I should be getting back to it. But not this week - I have a deadline of sorts this week.

Anyway! Sketching.

Only two images this time, of which this is the first. There's nothing terribly great here, but there are some areas that even I can tell are showing improvement. There's an improvement in the way I'm defining twisting motions, I think my representation of the abdomen is getting better and even hands and feet are showing a slight improvement from where I was a year ago. So that's all good. The only reference used here was for the lower abdominal and legs image in the lower right, where I worked from my anatomical figurine, but had a go at making the results more feminine (it's a masculine figure). Not perfect, obviously.

I did draw quite a bit more of it, but it's not so much that it was 'bad' as it was quick. The figure in the top right is representative of the stuff I've left out. Just quick near gestures to focus on small things (in this case the jut of the abdomen as it meets the pelvis).

Not much to say about these. Some of them were very successful (I particularly like the girl in the top left and the one with the mohawk), some were pretty disastrous(There's something very Shelly Duval like about the girl in the top right - but not really in a good way). Not much else to say really. No references used across the board, and facbook friend identification though the woman in the lower centre was the same as the person leaning against the fence in the first image when I uploaded these to my gallery there. I'm not sure if that means I've fallen into a rut of drawing everyone the same, or if facebook just plays really fast and loose with it's facial recognition (I suspect a bit of both).

And that's your lot. For now. There will be a little more coming, very soon indeed.