This is the second week on this pose and Al wants us to do a big painting, so this is a 24 x 36 canvas. the first step was for me to take my sketch and grid it up. I posted my sketch last week. I made a copy on my copy machine and then drew a grid.
At school I used that grid to transfer the drawing to my larger canvas, and as it turned out my sketch was a slightly different proportion, so my painting is slightly longer than my sketch, and I had to take that into account. Al was a big help here making sure I double checked what I was doing. After the initial rough in, I put my sketch away and worked from the model, checking and correcting the drawing. Next Al took me to his studio and lent me some Damar varnish and we went to the spray room and sprayed the drawing, fixing my charcoal sketch.
Once the damar had dried, I worked laying in the basic tones, blocking in the big shapes, values and masses working from our model. Now the painting will have to wait till next week when I'll get to work on the painting again, starting to mass in the color. Like many teachers, Al always brings in plenty of books from his collection on various artists and painters to inspire us and spark conversation. I had been looking forward to taking a class with Al for a long time and so far it's been fun. I know often people don't use that word, but Art School should be fun as well as hard work.
Ohhh, nice block in! There's something really dynamic about the light shapes in the figure and on the drapery.
ReplyDeleteBtw, I meant to say I really liked your thumbnails from the previous post...how long did you spend on each of them? I'm really trying to develop a better way of doing quick compositional studies...it's something I struggle with alot.
Thanks Laura. Al does a good set-up and the shapes are strong on this one. Hm, maybe 20 minutes or so tops to do that initial sketch. It's a morning class so the brain works a bit slower ;-)
ReplyDeleteThe goal was shapes not detail, which I can fall into very easy. I was thinking light and atmosphere. The more sketches you do the faster you can go, the better and more sure you get about choices.