Foot study

Amidst my morning rush, I forgot my large drawing pad for this evening's class at GCA. I tried to make the most of things by doing a smallish foot study- they had been giving me trouble. I need to practice that crazy atelier-style graphite rendering technique. The contours got a little out of hand too. Patience...

I'm in this class 5 nights a week for the rest of the month; combined with the day job, it's pretty intense, but it's excellent practice. I can feel myself slouching more and more from the lack of physical exercise though. My kingdom for an extra 4 hours a day...

Figure dump

Portrait from GCA;
sketches from 58 Gallery
and Spring Studio.

These were fun, but I feel I should focus on doing more finished work sometimes.

JULIA

Another portrait study from GCA, desperately in need of a coat of varnish. Threw some digital silliness on top for the hell of it.

Beetleboy / big B

I saw a fantastic presentation on Bouguereau yesterday afternoon over at the Grand Central Academy of Art... The speaker, Greydon Parrish, went over big B's working process, which consisted of the following steps:

1 Thumbnails / Gestures
2 Sketch- graphite or charcoal w/ chalk (generally from life, looked to be about 10-15 min.)
3 Color sketches in oil (small - around 4"x5")
4 Oil Studies (heads, hands, and other problematic areas, moderate to life-sized)
5 Cartoon (life-sized, contour lines, ready for transfer)
6 Scrubbed in oils on smooth surface (light ground, loosely roughed with bristle brush, directly to full color- no b&w underpaint)
7 Render Selectively ( focus to turn form and focus the detail on areas of import)
8 ???
9 PROFIT!!!


Listed like this, the notes don't reveal anything surprising. It's just a nice, logical way of working, and the man was thorough with everything he did. A lot of the interest for me was in looking at examples of the various stages, and there was something magical about actually seeing Bouguereau's thumbnail sketches.

One quote of Greydon's also stood out to me: "With all of this work, it would be odd that he wasn't right."

We all just need to paint more.

Also, here's part of a thing I was working on for Dominance War; I believe the deadline is still May 11th. I don't include it here in an attempt to relate to Bouguereau, I just dislike posts without artwork.

Portrait Class

Head study from Waddell's class @ the Grand Central Academy. I'm using masonite for the next one; the weave of this linen kept getting in the way.

Portrait Class

portrait from the waddell class at the grand central academy of art. need some work on my color.