Figure Comp Week-1

This is the first painting done in my Figure Comp class taught by Doug Martenson. This was a two session pose, the last session being today during the uninstructed portion of the class which happens every Friday. So it's the first official painting of the semester.

As always you are fighting the changing light this time of the year as the sun sets early so values change pretty darn quick about an hour into class which starts at 1pm. This causes you to rework things, constantly revisit the entire painting. I tried using a new medium today, Detail Liquin, which is thinner than the standard Liquin and dries fast like the thicker medium but allows you to work thinner. Alex Kanevsky uses this medium I am told. This helped tack the painting up quite a bit as I worked, racing the clock. In the end I am happy with parts and in others I wish I had more time as the values were pretty narrow on a lot of the figure. I never got to address the head as much or the hair, but them's the breaks in a class painting.

Lots of things are different this year for me personally and career wise and I am really knuckling down even harder in school. I have big goals and big dreams and I know I'll never get anywhere near them unless I up my game even more. That doesn't mean that I won't have fun, but last year at times I feel I wasn't as focused as I could have been, 2008 was a Fucking Shitty Year, but 2009 seems to be doing much better and I feel more balanced and more focused, my goals are clear, now I have to work hard to get there.