Today was a day I have been looking forward to for a long time...the day I actually started painting at school. Today in Doug Martenson's class we started with a prematura by mixing equal parts Quinacridone Red, cad yellow light and ultramarine blue with a palette knife on the palette. Then we toned the canvas using a bit of odorless terps, in my case at piece of 16 x 20 massonite, which I had primed with 3 layers of gesso and sanded.
Leaving plenty of our original prematura color we mixed in some ultramarine and blocked in the figure paying attention to the light source. Then taking a paper towel we wiped out the lights and then using only the three main color and titanium white started to go in and paint in the figure, adding colors and mixing every other color out of the combination of the three.
It was hard work but fun, the room was super hot... and massonite is slippery, and you can spend a lot of time jumping back and forth mixing and painting one area, value to the next. Our model Khenti was awesome. She's beautiful and has a graceful toned body and choose a good pose. My angle ended up being tricky as it was foreshortened.
Martenson did do a very basic demo to get us started and then walked around giving each person critiques and pointers. He helped me with a few pointers, saying I was starting a bit too heavy with chiaroscuro, so I took a bit out, but he was very pleased with what I did and said to bring in my complimentary colors next week. He said I added a bit too much white to the legs, and he's right, and I was rushing, but time ran out in the class. But he thought I did a good job and my "drawing was very good" in my painting. I wish I had more time as I felt I was just getting underway.
4 comments:
Mike,
Red, why did it have to be red? Was there some psychic cross pollination from the cute Hell Girl you saw over the weekend?
Seriously, thanks for the insights into a classical art program that I am envious of and might never get a chance to attend the likes of.
Following up on some of the web resouces I mentioned to you and Echo:
a blog post about Ron Lemen and another post linking to an animation blog "temple of seven golden camels" by Mark Kennedy discussing design in life drawing.
Check out the links if you all have time.
Take care,
-Jonathan
I'm BACK!
Mr. Manley, the actionplanet.com email is not working for me - tried it three times (first with a CC of an email to Mr. Kohn). Can you send me an email to lexkyccg AT gmail.com or jonathan_gilpin AT hotmail.com? Man, sorry to be a pain but there's some security glitch blocking me out I guess?
Hey! That's really good! I like it a lot.
Hey just found this blog. I went back to school too! This one looks good-very accomplished. I like the loose brush strokes and the foreshortened legs came out fine.
Post a Comment