30 Minute Nude

This is another good model. She is absolutely perfectly still, AND she remains smiling the entire pose. Also, she has a very distinctive elongated head which is shaved on the sides, cut very close in the back and top front, and for the crown(!) a top knot of dreadlocks bleached to a very pale yellow. I always mean to get that top knot in the painting, but frequently, like this one, the adjustments that I have to make for that long head and face force the top of the head off the panel. Oh, but she is fun to draw and paint!

Timed Painting:Karma 2

Another 30 minute painting. Because of a strong back light, she had a very complicated light pattern on the front of her body with only a little sliver on the left breast fully lit. It sort of makes a design pattern here rather than making a body feeling mass -- however, interesting to have to get all those grayed colors down fast. Still loving the sense of bulk though.

Timed Painting:Karma

This is my favorite model, I am over the moon when she shows up. She is so paintable.

It was a 30 minute pose. When I look at the painting the next day, it seems that the strokes are so few and the painting is so small, how could it have taken that long -- but when I am doing it I am going like a house afire and always irritated that the time is up. So much has to happen before the paint even goes down though....I have to figure out what part of her I want and then get the parts connected and then decide on and mix the paint and then get it down. Well, this is no big deal, it's the same for everybody, just that it has to happen fast, so it's amazing to have anything coherent at all. The fact that there isn't time to think is maybe the best and most valuable part of the exercise, because I am frequently surprised by what I did.

Reclining Nude Study

Still more wiping...full moon I hear.

This is the last of 4- 30 minute paintings from the painting group, first 3 really unspeakably bad and I could feel myself sliding into the abyss, and then I got one! I am quite proud of myself when I do an acceptable one because working with this time limit and all the discomfort of bad light, French easel, forgot the necessary color (cad yellow), etc., requires such absolute concentration that I lose all self consciousness. Then I am exhausted and have to have a beer.

I will be in North Carolina for a few days helping my father celebrate his 90th birthday. Maybe when I take up the brush again the wiping phase will be done.

Nude Study/Back

I have been working hard on another project this week and there's nothing much to post.... but here is a study from my painting session with a model. This was a 30 minute study and a huge improvement over the last back I painted a couple of weeks ago. At the beginning of the first back I mumbled some remark(out loud even, such hubris) about how easy a back was going to be after doing a complicated and difficult front (limbs, stomach, breasts, facial features, hair, all!) and then produced a painting of a flat porcine slab.... frightening. But this one is much better because I am improving in my understanding of value and temperature. Backs can be hard! I love this model though.... something about her wants to be painted.

AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROUS SUPPORTIVE COMMENTS!

Nude Study 3

In last night's painting session, I had 2 wipers, 2 keepers, each a 30 minute pose. We had a great model which makes it more fun. I ran out of steam in the last half, whipped from a long day.

Nude Study

I painted a mugshot today but it turned on me in the end and I had to wipe it. Will try tomorrow. Today I am posting a study I did Monday night in a painting group. We have a model and do 4 30 minute poses. At the end of the session we did a quick 15 minute pose (this one) and I was able to get it down in broad strokes with the parts in the right place and the values pretty much ok. I feel encouraged because I see that I am learning to condense visual info faster and establish the form without too much thinking. I just want the image to go from my eye to my hand without cerebral detour.