Ted Seth Jacobs - Figure Workshop

This week I've begun Ted Seth Jacobs' 6-week figure drawing workshop, offered through the Bay Area Classical Artist Atelier.

So far I have come up with this summary of my impression of Ted's method for figure drawing. (Note: This is my impression, and not a direct quote, he may describe it differently):

The human body is an organized, "designed" system of interlocking structures.

This interlocking system as a whole is affected by the downward pull of gravity, and also by the upward pressures of supports.

The whole or the parts can be seen as being pulled and pushed, resulting in draping (like a suspension bridge) and bulging.

Pressure from supports (like a chair, etc) makes the masses of the body take on the characteristics of the underlying support.

Ted draws figures with all curved lines. He feels that sharp corners are antithetical to life, and would result in "starvation, disease, and death!" (he says with a deep ominous tone, and then a chuckle).

As you can imagine, I am having a hard time reconciling this, considering I have spent most of 2007 studying a more formal, straight-edged block-in method.

But I believe there is a correlation between the two approaches - both are investigations into the underlying system. One uses perfect arcs and straight lines, the other uses undulating curves. But both are looking for the structure, the system, the truth, the architecture, the energy of the human form.

Ted looks for lines of action, grouped in "families" of similar directions. He teaches us that every contour (visible line) is in direct relationship to these invisible lines of movement.

Today he drew a demo for us of Bouguereau's Pieta at the Legion of Honor museum here in San Francisco. This is my approximation of some of the relationships he diagrammed for us:


Below, the more formal/rigid analysis I've been practicing these last few months. I try to find main angles that repeat in parallel all over the form. The angel of the jaw as it correlates to the angle of the ankle, and everything between.


And this last one is for fun - it's more about the composition and architecture of the entire painting, versus the structure of a single figure. It's fascinating to find these diagrams in a painting, so clear and yet hidden at first glance. We feel it before we see it:


As a final note: My favorite concept so far from Ted:
"The simplest definition of a 'gesture' is an action showing intention, or desire."

Pewter on Plastic

9 x 12 inches, graphite pencil on paper

The scan does not capture the subtlety of the graphite, but you get the general idea.

My goal with this still life drawing was to make a more dramatic composition and attain a sense of depth. Compared to my previous attempts (scroll down to see my other recent still life drawings) I think I did a better job of making an engaging image. But still not quite there yet.

I also experimented with making fine white marks with the eraser into the graphite, and alternating those marks with layers of crosshatching, to create a more interesting and complex surface. You can see it especially on the main body of the pewter pitcher, which I built up with layers of knitted marks.

After Michaelangelo's Sibyl

Sketch after Michaelangelo's Study for the Libyan Sibyl
12 x 16 inches, graphite pencil on paper

Last month on my trip to New York I was able to see the original of this drawing in the study room of the Met. The mere 40 minutes I was able to look at the original drawing (and the fact that I was a bit overwhelmed being in the presence of it) made it impossible to do a satisfactory study of it.

So I bought a reproduction at the Met gift shop, and this week I did this study of it. I spent about 8 hours on this.

I am so amazed by the organized matrix of systems that make up a human being. I say "matrix" because every part is interrelated to every other part, like a grid. To put any landmark in the wrong position skews every other landmark in the drawing.

And of course Michaelangelo designs his drawing to illustrate these relationships. Copying his drawing is like watching a chess player think.

For fun I've diagrammed some of the relationships I found:

If I draw lines following the axis of each hand, as if she is balancing rods across the heels of each palm, you can see that these two lines can be repeated all over the body, connecting everything in a system:

Another thing I look for is verticals. When we draw, we tend to put things where we think they are. The twisted position in this drawing makes it even more complicated to capture the gesture, because we tend to want to exaggerate the twist, or "untwist" the form while we draw:

To fight against this habit of untwisting or over-twisting, I drop vertical imaginary plumb lines and keep them in mind for lining up landmarks. Glancing at this image quickly, I never would have guessed that the ear is directly over the top left corner of the pelvis, or that the back contour of the back is almost a perfect vertical.

This is the sketch I did at the Met in front of the original drawing. Although it looks clunky and angular, I used the same method for both drawings. I don't draw any curves, I just keep segmenting the straight lines.

I wanted to see how I did on the fast drawing in the Met, so I colored it red and superimposed it over my longer study. I did pretty well in the fast sketch after all. In fact, I made the same mistake twice, but corrected it in the longer sketch!

You can see how the fast sketch (in red) has the left arm too far over to the left. I did the same thing on the longer sketch, but later realized my mistake and adjusted it back over to the right, fairly far into the drawing.

I think I did that twice because I see the head as positioned between the two hands, so I unconsciously tried to center it between the two hands. In reality, it is much closer to the left hand.

Self Portrait Sketch

9 x 12 inches, graphite pencil on paper

I haven't done a self portrait in about 15 years. That's almost half my lifetime ago. But it was a nice challenging exercise, and the model is very obliging (and cheap), so I'll probably do another one, maybe even within 15 years.

Pewter Pitcher and Grapes Drawing

8 x 10, graphite pencil on paper

earlier block-in stage of the same drawing

My conflict recently is whether to spend my time on exercises and studies, or to try to create finished paintings to the best of my current ability.

The conflict is that working on exercises makes me feel like time is rushing by me while I piddle around and have little to show or sell. But then, painting "finished" pieces always makes me realize how much better I would be if I had spent more time studying drawing, or value, or color, or form as a discrete problems instead of tackling everything at once in a painting.

I have a feeling this is something I will struggle with my whole life.



Thought I would share my latest version of my still-life setup, which has evolved to be somewhat elaborate recently:

I want a more direct, artificial light to fall on my still life so I can see stronger shadows. So I tacked a big piece of white foamcore to hang down from my skylight. The white, general light still falls on my easel, while the the still life is shaded from the skylight, and lit by a little incandescent light on a flexible arm.

I also was struggling to hold up a cardboard viewfinder while I am blocking in the composition. So I set up an extra easel and clamped my viewfinder to it. If I position everything perfectly, I can see my still life setup framed perfectly in the viewfinder, and without turning my head significantly I can also see my easel, and even reach it with my pencil if I am lucky.

It takes a lot of shifting around to get the right position of the viewer, the easel, and my own head, but once it's set up it makes everything so much easier.

Peeled Lemon II

8 x 10 inches, graphite pencil on paper

earlier stage of the same drawing

After seeing all those Dutch paintings this summer I feel strangely tempted to tackle dewy fruit and reflective goblets and glass flutes and heavy satin cloth....

I have cut up and peeled nearly a dozen lemons to get the perfect twisted peel and correct lemon shape for these two drawings. The fruit flies are loving my studio these days.

Peeled Lemon 1

8 x 10 inches, graphite pencil on paper

earlier stage of the same drawing

Inspired by the lemons often present in Dutch still lifes, I decided to try my own. Problem is, the lemon peel dries out after just a day or two, so I haven't gotten as far painting them yet.

Last Day in New York

Today I spent ALL DAY at the Met, it was fantastic!!

First off I had to track down Madam X, and discovered that they have devoted an entire gallery room to Sargent pantings. I was... agog. And the best part is it was nearly empty the whole time I was in there. (Maybe because they are renovating the American Wing so this layout is temporary, and also it is up and down stairs and rather hard to find and The Sargent Room is at the very end of rooms and rooms of American art. Anyway, I just felt I'd gone to heaven.)

What you can't see here are some exquisite landscapes on a wall to the right, including this incredible little painting of an Alpine Pool. And high up on another wall is The Wyndham Sisters. And truly, when you look at that painting, you can just about hear their silk gowns rustling on the white brocade couch.

Sketch after Velazquez' Juan de Pareja
approx. 6 x 6 inches, pencil on paper

This one is for my friend Shawn Kenney, who told me Velazquez' Juan de Pareja is one of his favorite paintings. So thanks to him mentioning that I sought it out and decided to do a little sketch.

Next up on my Met to-do list was to spend some time in the new Greek and Roman sculpture gallery. It has huge glass ceilings and a fountain making bubbling-water noises and as soon as you enter you start to breathe more deeply and slow down and really look. And there's lots to look at.

Sketch from an Aphrodite in Marble
Roman copy of a Greek orginal
Pencil on paper, approx 9 x 5 inches

Finally, I took another look at the Age of Rembrandt exhibit (see highlights from the exhibit here). This was actually my third visit to the Met this week, so I had already seen most the exhibit.

The exhibit was bigger than the Portland exhibit I went to last month, so it was nice to see a LOT of paintings. But, being the Met, it was really crowded. I would have loved to spend some time drawing Aristotle's Sleeves, but the place was just too mobbed.

So today was our last day in New York. I've added more pictures to my NY Picasa Album. Some are arty "photographs", some are just snapshots taken with the crappy camera phone. (The arty-est one is the blue billowing tarp over a dumpster, you have to agree.)

Next it's home and back to the studio. Stay tuned!!

Drawing at the Met

Sketch after Michaelangelo

Sketch after Leonardo

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art you can make an appointment at the Drawing Study Room, which is like a library, and they will pull any drawing you want to see from their collection and put it on a stand on the table in front of you. Wow... so I went and did this today, and of course had to choose their two most famous drawings, Michaelangelo's Study for the Libyan Sibyl and Leonardo's Head of the Virgin. I only had a short time with each, and I was pretty overwhelmed with being in the presence of a 499 year old drawing, but I enjoyed the chance to get a good look at them. I'm also inspired to do more master copies from reproductions at home.

Today I also visited Grand Central Academy of Art today. Dan Thompson teaches there and he was kind enough to give me a tour. The school is set up in four huge old classrooms on the 6th floor of a midtown building. Each room is dedicated to a single pursuit: figure study, cast drawings, sculpture for painters, etc, and they have arranged the lighting and painted the walls to be perfect for each pursuit. The school is gathering an amazing collection of casts, and everywhere you see statues set up with lights, stacked in corners, tacked to walls, with students busily working away on detailed pencil drawings.

I've now visited Studio Incamminati, Gage Academy, and Barnstone Studios - between all these, I have certainly had a great little tour of the "American atelier movement" these last few weeks.

Frick Frack etc...

Sketches from the Frick

I spent a couple hours at the Frick Collection today. It wasn't very busy so I could stand and draw without being jostled by throngs. I sketched a Rembrandt self-portrait from 1658, and the lady from Vermeer's "Mistress & Maid" - the mistress is receiving an apparently unexpected letter from her maid, thus the gesture of surprise.

Front steps of the Frick Collection

I also visited 4 galleries today, but I was only really excited by two of them:

Forum Gallery
A works on paper exhibit with some good Modern and contemporary specimens. Got to see my first Stephen Assael up close and in person. He seems to scrape away a lot with a knife of some sort, so he layers lots of dark marks with graphite and charcoal, and then white marks with the scraping. The show as a whole seemed a bit jumbled though, with only the fact that the work was on paper holding it all together.

Hirschle & Adler
A great show of still lifes by Paul Rahilly. His color technique is very impressive - he uses tons of color but manages to keep a compelling value range as well. The gallery was also showing selections from the permanent collection, including these "Allegorical Figures in Blue/Pink" which were just luscious to see up close.

New York is of course all about walking.... and walking.... and taking the subway. I quickly gave up on trying to wear even semi-attractive shoes and have been comfortably clomping around in my San Francisco standard-issue chartreuse green Keens. (I just try to stay out of the way of the many model-types who seem to glide effortlessly down the street in their white headbands, huge sunglasses, and smart little pumps.)

The heat hasn't been record-breaking, just high 80's, but being from San Francisco even 80's is shockingly warm, and the subway platforms are just about unbearable. It's supposed to rain Friday so maybe the heat will break soon. Ah, September in NY!

New York Monday 9/24

Ten days in New York! I am so excited to have time to explore!

My first pilgrimage was to visit Arcadia Gallery, which I first discovered online over a year ago. The current show is "small works" which I was thrilled about, because about 20 artists are represented with several small paintings each. You can see the whole Small Works Show here, but the tiny images on the website do not do the work justice. Camie Davis, Paul Raymond Seaton and Daniel Adel's paintings were particularly stunning in person.

The gallery prints up a large multi-page color brochure/catalog for each of their shows and sells copies of them for just $3. So I now own a handful of beautiful little catalogs for Adel, Seaton, Grimaldi, Hicks, Mackesy and Lipking.

Had a nice conversation with the gallery owner, who guessed I must be a painter, because apparently only painters buy up handfuls of their brochures. He says he does not show "classical realists" per se... rather painters who paint very well. He says he looks for something contemporary and relevant, not simply work that attempts to mimic the past. I told him Myron Barnstone said nearly the same thing to me.

FYI, Arcadia is going to have major works showing at the San Francisco Fine Art Fair at Fort Mason this Sept 28/29. If you are in SF this weekend don't miss it!

After the gallery visit we had a wonderful afternoon walking through SoHo and the Village (see pictures). New York is only 75 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny about 8 days a year, and we caught one such day!

Jacob Collins Interview 2006

Some great quotes from an interview with Jacob Collins (the interview took place a year ago, but I just discovered it):

"One of the things I noticed when I was an art student was that a lot of artists or young art students were made to feel very culturally insecure—even in a socially or socio-economically way. In light of this, they tried to pursue a kind of art, like modernism, that seemed to push forward. Traditional art was, essentially, the art of provincials or hicks, not intellectual or significant."

"When I was a kid, I felt like I was isolated in my pursuit of traditional art forms... There’s a certain amount of regret that I experienced when I was launching into a career where I was pretty isolated: I was doing Traditional art in the 1980s... and gradually, one by one, I found other people who were interested in the same thing—in the beginning I was quite amazed and excited to find another person who also wanted to draw a figure with a coherent structure, or to learn how to put together a painting with paint and glaze.... I started finding people in very mysterious ways: people popped up and showed up at the door. I was very inspired. I found that I was meeting a whole lot of people who had the same strong desire for Traditionalism as me."

"For quite a while when I was starting out, most of the market in New York was for Modern art.... But now it’s changing, it’s changing fast. The galleries are really recognizing the passions of the artists and the interests of the collectors."

Read the whole interview here.

Drawing Marathon

Pencil on paper, 18 x 24 inches

Charcoal on paper, 18 x 24 inches

On Sunday I attended Bay Area Model's Guild Drawing Marathon, which is an all-day drawing event held quarterly. They have a room full of models working all day, with different lengths of poses. I worked at the long-pose model stand, so each of these two drawings was 3-hour session.

Rembrandt in Portland, OR

I visited Portland Museum of Art to see the Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art exhibit. The work is on tour from Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum while that museum is being renovated. It was wonderful to see the Rembrandts in person, I love to stare at his brush strokes and try to fathom how he builds up from transparent darkness to his signature clotted, swirly lights.

As for the other Dutch Masters, I was especially entranced by this Still Life by Jan van de Velde, which surprised me. The reproduction does not do it justice at all, but the painting was just captivating in person. Even standing within inches from the canvas, the illusion of the glass objects emerging from the dark background is never broken. More than just stunning hyper-realism, this painting has a magical, captivating feeling.

(An interesting footnote - smoking was considered a sin, but the wealthy, pious Dutch liked to hang images of the vices they rejected, as a way to display their own righteousness. Which is why so many Dutch still lifes feature pipes and smoking paraphernalia. I wonder, would that be the equivalent of our own most wealthy and pious members of society displaying images of illegal drug paraphernalia?)

At the museum store I bought a fascinating book: Art in the Making: Rembrandt which has gorgeous close-ups of Rembrandt's brush strokes, as well as magnified cross-sections of the paint layers, and analysis of what pigments he used and how he used them. Very fun to find such a technical book.

While in Portland I visited my college friend, painter Scott Conary, whom I had not seen in person in 14 years. He and his wife were kind enough to put me up for the night, and we drank wine and talked art for hours. We had some good discussions, because he does not understand my fascination with classical realism, but at least he liked what I showed him of Michael Grimaldi so we found some common ground :)

Drapery and Pitcher

8.5 x 11 inches, graphite pencil on paper

I decided to work on a drapery study while I have been waiting for my paints to be shipped back from Seattle.

Time Lapse

Juliette Aristides' Still Life Painting Workshop
Gage Academy, Seattle WA, August 2007

This is so cool - Nowell set up his high-definition digital video camera on his tripod and recorded a couple time-lapse films of our art class this week.

You can see the films on YouTube:
Gage Academy on YouTube Day 1
Gage Academy on YouTube Day 2

You can also see higher-quality versions of the the clips on
Nowell's website.

Note - you'll need Quicktime, and the file sizes are large, it may take a while to load

Notes From Juliette Aristides' Workshop II

Trio: Two Pears and a Fig

8 x 10 inches, oil on panel

The last day of Juliette's still life painting workshop was today. I am so excited to get back to my studio and practice all the new techniques I learned! More on this pear painting at the end of this post.

Here are many of the paintings and excercises I produced during the workshop:

Analysis of a master work

Juliette distributed color copies of master paintings and had us trace over them with dry-erase markers on clear acetate to analyze the structure of the composition. What looks like a chaotic image is actually very carefully composed: It all fits within a neat, perfectly centered diamond shape.

Black and white "poster study" of a master work

Juliette had us mix 9 values of titanium and ivory on our palettes: black, white, and 7 steps between. We then copied a master painting, simplifying the major light and dark areas into flat, "posterized" areas of tone.

Still life "poster study"

Using the same flat values, we painted a quick sketch of our still-life setup. We also did these same studies with cut paper - paper colored black, white, and two shades of gray. (I don't have a picture of this). The cut paper really forced us to simplify, and did not allow "cheating" - no mixing of vaules.

Value study underpainting - Raw umber "wipe-out"
(brown paint is applied and then "wiped out" to show white canvas beneath)

Warm/Cool study

This small study was done with only raw umber, ultramarine blue, and titanium white.

Egg Tiling, about 4 x 5 inches

This was my first attempt at the technique Juliette calls "tiling". After doing a raw umber underpainting, the color phase of the painting is applied stroke by stroke, starting from the darkest dark and stacking "tiles" up to the lightest light. Each tile color is mixed on the palette and applied with a single, short brushstroke. From a distance it blends together, but up close each color note is distinct. You can see sharp edges around my tiles - bad! With practice the goal is to paint tiles that are close in value and color, with no sharp transitions. It's a veery slooow process. But actually very satisfying.

Copper Pot and Baby Onions
12 x 16, oil on panel

I described how I started this painting in a previous post. This is my first attempt applying all of the techniques in a single painting. But after a couple days I decided I had composed a painting with too many complicated elements and too-strong contrasting colors and values. I wanted to try something more subtle to practice the techniques, so I called this one "done" and moved on.

Trio: Two Pears and a Fig
8 x 10 inches, oil on panel

I spent 2 and 1/2 days on this painting. The photograph does not show all the subtle "tiling" I sweated over, but you get the general idea. Juliette encouraged me to slow down (apparently my Daily Painting practice has made me a "speed painter") and look very carefully at the transitions. She had me pay close attention to midtones, the subtle gradations between the darkest darks and lightest lights across the surface of the pears. I feel like I learned so much within this one small painting, and I am so excited to get back to my studio and try more.

Pitcher and Fruit, 6 x 8 inches
Unfinished

I started this painting as a last quick project today, the last day, but did not have time to finish it. But I like the composition a lot, so maybe I'll set it up at home and finish it.

These are the steps Juliette taught for creating a painting:

1. Draw the composition with pencil on paper
2. Transfer drawing to the canvas
3. Ink the major lines with an indelible fine point sharpie pen
4. Paint the whole canvas with raw umber, and "wipe out" to create a tonal underpainting
5. Let the underpainting dry
6. With full color, paint the background, ground plane, shadow side of objects, light side of objects, in that order
7. Apply color with small "tiles"
8. Paint the "least interesting" areas of the painting first - save the best for last

More various notes and tips from Juliette:

• Practice mixing a color wheel with lots of beautiful, clean neutrals
• Lay a note down for a color and leave it - don't over-mix.
• Your palette tends to reflect the painting - mix the colors you will need
• To "pump up" the light in a painting, focus on super-extending the halftones - don't focus on the darkest darks and lightest lights.
• Look at Chardin
• Look at Fantin Latour
• A strong image will read well from a distance
• Economy - solve problems using less (ie, solve an edge using a shift in color, instead of a shift in value)
• Become rock-solid in a few simple things
• Lump shadow shapes and light shapes, not individual objects
• Try one bright color note in a mainly monochromatic painting
• Copy master works, analyze for lines, arcs, value, color distribution

A few links:
Fletcher Palette
Picture Perfect Viewfinder

Notes from Juliette Aristides' Workshop

12 x 16 inches, oil on panel
Work in Progress

This is a painting I am working on in Juliette Aristides' still life workshop in Seattle right now.

As a class we started our paintings by doing a drawing and then transferring it to the canvas with transfer paper. Then we inked the drawing by tracing over the major lines with indelible sepia pen. Over the inked drawing, we did a raw umber underpainting called a "wipe out" (wiping away the brown paint with a cloth, down to the white canvas, to do a full tonal underpainting). Only then did we start with color, working from dark to light, concentrating on one area of the picture at a time.

Juliette teaches us to paint with small "tiles" of paint laid next to each other, each tile a short little brush stroke. She says I need to work on making tiles that are closer in tone and value, more sensitive and subtle. She demonstrated it for me in the white onions at the top, which is why those onions look so good!

We work on longer paintings like this one on the afternoons. In the mornings we do small exercises, like value scales and black and white poster studies and color wheel mixing. Now that I have my laptop I'll photograph some of those next week and post them.

Studio Incamminati

Studio Incamminati interior, artist of the foreground painting unknown

On BACAA founder Linda Dulaney's suggestion, I dropped by Studio Incamminati, a classical atelier art school in Philadelphia. I should have called ahead first, but they were very welcoming and accommodating, and a friendly student offered to give us a tour.

They have a lovely large space on the 4th floor of a downtown converted loft building. There they have set up 3 separate areas for a model to pose, with easels arranged in a circle for 10-15 students to work. We were told second-year students study with natural light near the large bank of windows, but first-year students start with artificial light in order to see sharp shadows and clear form.

The walls are covered with the very impressive drawings and paintings of students, along with beautiful demonstration drawings and paintings by instructors including those by Ted Seth Jacobs and Incamminati founder Nelson Shanks.

The student artwork was displayed in multiple stages, and it was fun to see them using the same methods I have been recently learning, starting with the block-in for both drawings and paintings. They even had the same kind of graphic, high-key color studies I did last week, and sure enough they were done in a workshop with Dan Thompson.

Rodin Museum

The Shade (foreground) and Adam (background)

Nowell and I got a chance to spend a couple hours at Phildelphia's Rodin Museum. Nowell had never been to the museum or seen so many Rodin works in one place so it was fun to see how much he loved the artwork.

Nowell pretending to "knock" on Rodin's Gates of Hell

Detail from Gates of Hell

Rodin's larger-than life sculpture Adam

My drawing of Adam

It was interesting to try out my newly learned "block-in" technique to sketch the sculpture. As I've been practicing recently, I used all straight lines, starting with long lines to create a large "envelope" polygon, and then cutting into it with shorter and short straight lines till the figure emerges.

It was fascinating to discover through the drawing process the zig-zag diagonals Rodin designed. Adam's weight bearing leg makes a nearly perfectly vertical line up to the back of his head, but everything else is a diagonal wrapping around that stable central axis. You can see his wrist, his right knee, and his left ankle are all on a straight diagonal line, nearly perpendicular to the diagonal line made by the left hip and right knee. And perfectly parallel to that hip/knee line is another diagonal going from the crease of his waist at the side to the inside crease of the wrist, and another parallel line from the elbow past the armpit to the sharp bend of the far shoulder blade on the back.

The thing I wonder about this approach though, is although the gesture is captured and the proportions are accurate, the drawing itself does not look very dynamic. Previous to my recent introduction to classical drawing, I would have scribbled and erased and made a much less accurate but also more energetic drawing.

I guess when I get faster with this process I'll be able to make energetic marks that are also accurate. That's my hope at least. And despite the tentativeness of the drawing, I really loved having the chance to draw from such an amazing work of art.