Michael Grimaldi: Portrait Painting Workshop

Portrait Study
charcoal and graphite on paper
about 4 x 4 inches

Two years ago, in Summer 2006, I set up an art studio in my loft, hired a series of models for a few weeks and started figure painting after nearly a decade away from art.

I was totally out of touch with the art world, and so I started poking around on the internet to see if any US galleries were showing figurative/realist work.

I immediately found Arcadia gallery in New York and was inspired, intimidated, and fascinated by the amazing work I found there. The painting "Nude with Tattoo" by Michael Grimaldi in particular stood out to me, and so I Googled his name to find out more about the artist.

One of the first search results was for a workshop Grimaldi had taught right here in my own back yard at Bay Area Classical Artist Atelier... but I had just missed his workshop by a few weeks! The BACAA web site said Grimaldi wouldn't be returning until 2008, so I had nearly two years to wait for his return.

In the meantime I looked around the BACAA web site and was amazed by all the incredible artists teaching there. So I signed up for a March 2007 workshop taught by Juliette Aristides, and began a new era of my art life. (You can read my blog post about that workshop with Juliette here.) I have since spent the last 14 months taking workshops with Juliette, Dan Thompson, and Ted Seth Jacobs.

Now, this week, the Michael Grimaldi 2008 workshop I have waited so long for has begun! The class is portrait painting, and we are starting with small thumbnail sketches to work out the composition and design of the final painting. Tomorrow I'll start blocking out the design and major proportions on my canvas. (The above sketches are charcoal on paper, each just a few inches.)

FRANCE
Two weeks from today I fly to France for a 3 week workshop at Studio Escalier. After the class Nowell is joining me and we'll spend another 3 weeks just hanging out in Paris. I'll be bringing my new pochade box, so watch for upcoming plein air oil sketches of Paris!

JULIETTE'S BOOK: CLASSICAL PAINTING ATELIER
Juliette Aristides' new book, Classical Painting Atelier has just been released and I just received my pre-ordered copy from Amazon today! I plan to spend the next couple hours poring over it before bed. From a quick peek it looks like a gorgeous follow-up to her first book, Classical Drawing Atelier. These are incredibly inspiring books, with beautiful reproductions by both classical and contemporary realist artists. I highly recommend them both for any art lover.

Rolling Hills of Marin County SOLD

5 x 7 inches SOLD
oil on panel

5 x 7 inches SOLD
oil on panel

I took a lovely daytrip up to Marin County (just north of San Francisco) for a drawing/painting date with my friend Kat. Kat took me to China Camp State Park where a short walk up a dirt path opened up to views of gorgeous rolling hills and eucalyptus trees.

I had a great day - it's rare that I make two paintings I am happy with in one day.

I have been having so much fun investigating all the "greens" of nature. I am discovering there is not much true green at all. Everything is fundamentally a cool blue or a warm brown, and only tinged slightly green. A little green goes a long way. I think every beginning landscape painter knows that horrible feeling when you try to emulate all the lovely grass and trees with vibrant greens and yellows right from the tube and YUCK, it just doesn't look right.

I've been using mainly cobalt blue, cad light green, mars red (which is a lovely rich red brown) and raw sienna (which acts like a brown-ey yellow ochre, I like it better than ochre). And a lot of titanium white.

These seem to act like perfect mixing primaries, especially for outdoors. The Mars red is red enough act as a compliment to the greens (so if a puddle of paint is too green, I mix in a tiny dab of Mars red to cancel the color and make it more neutral). The burnt sienna acts like a dark yellow and helps warm up my greens if I need to paint some sunlight areas (cad green with some burnt sienna with a ton of white). The cobalt blue and the sienna make a lovely dark shadow, and if I then add white I can get a nice subtle neutral gray, warm or cool depending on the ratio of blue to brown.

These are my main colors, but I also mix in a little magenta and ultramarine blue for the coolest and darkest violet shadows.

Fog City

5 x 7 inches
oil on panel

Today San Francisco was in signature form : Bright white fog alternating with deep blue sky, with a brisk wind to push it as fast as possible over our pastel-painted city. This is my attempt to capture it.

I am also working on a more ambitious landscape in the mornings of slanted shadows on a tree-lined path. It's taking me several sessions to capture it all but I'll post it soon.

Workshops and teachers are valuable, but really nothing beats painting and drawing every single day. I have learned so much in the last couple weeks of painting every day. I dream every night about brush strokes and the feel of a brush dragging paint. There really is nothing like paint.

Easter at Buena Vista Park

5 x 7 inches
oil on panel

I had a wonderful Easter morning painting these trees on the hilltop park of Buena Vista. There's a narrow sidewalk wrapping around the curved border of the park with a view of the city beyond and trees reaching out from the park overhead. If you look closely you can see the faint view of St Ignatius in the background.

I realized today painting for me comes down to just two things: Paint what I love to see, and look closely. Love and Look, essentially. When I am distracted by all the voices of my teachers in my head, when I am trying (and failing) to emulate painters I admire, when I am trying to paint like someone else instead of like myself, the painting fails (and I have no fun). But when I relax and just enjoy what I am looking at, the painting flows easily.

I have painted outdoors most days of the last two weeks. I wake up in the morning thinking about paint before I open my eyes. And when I do open my eyes, the first thing I do is look at the window to see the quality of the light. And then I jump out of bed and rush through my morning routine to get outside as soon as possible, while the shadows are still long and interesting.

View of St Ignatius SOLD

5 x 7 inches
oil on panel

After the first part of the day spent painting at Corona Heights Park (see previous post), I went to another location to paint the late afternoon slanting through the streets of my neighborhood and lighting up St Ignatius in the distance.

5 x 7 inches

oil on panel

The second painting was an experiment in making a more abstract image, just trying to get the colors and values and feeling of the view.

My husband took another picture of me painting. It was 65 degrees F at noon today and most people were in summer clothes, but when I stand still in the shade as the sun sets and the wind picks up I have to dress like I am in much colder part of the world. I'm seriously considering buying fingerless gloves.

Corona Heights Park

5 x 7 inches

oil on panel

These are the rocks at the peak of Corona Heights Park. I used flat brushes to paint this which I think helped established the planes of he rock.

It was a beautiful day but the wind picked up in the afternoon. I used a new shade umbrella that attaches to my easel for the first time, and I thought I might get blown off the hill! My husband was with me and took this photo of me painting. The view of San Francisco from the hill is amazing. Maybe next time I'll try and paint it.

Carl Street Vistas

Crepes on Cole SOLD

oil on panel
5 x 7 inches

Train Tunnel Color Study
oil on panel
5 x 7 inches

Sunset on Carl St
oil on panel
5 x 7 inches

Today I did all these studies while set up on one stretch of sidewalk. Just as I was done and packed up the sun started to set and I unpacked everything for one final sketch.

I'm so excited about my new plein air / open air pant box! I posted a picture below (you can see part of the train tunnel just to the right). It's perfect: there are compartments for my paints, my palette, my brush cleaner and even wet paintings. As you can see I hang my brushes off the side in my own adaptation. I love my "pochade" box so much, I just ordered a second tiny one, the little "Thumb Box" to bring to Paris with me. (I leave for Paris in less than a month!). I bought my wonderful "pochade" boxes at www.pochade.com.

Buena Vista Park

Buena Vista Park Tree Study
oil on panel
5 x 7 inches

It was a gorgeous spring day in San Francisco, but standing still in the shade, on top of a hilltop park in the wind, I got pretty frozen after a couple hours. When I finally packed up my fingers were almost too numb to manipulate the latches on my easel. But it was worth it, I think this is the best landscape I've ever done.

Prettiest Laundry in San Francisco SOLD

Laundry at Cole and Grattan Streets II
oil on panel
9 x 12 inches

Laundry at Cole and Grattan Streets I
oil on panel
9 x 12 inches

I adore this coin-op laundry. It's in a fabulous old Edwardian building, and the interior is painted an amazing turquoise that just sings. It's most incredible at dusk, when the sky is still a light indigo and the artificial lights inside make the windows glow aqua. I hope someday I am fast enough to capture this corner as the sun goes down.

As for daylight painting: I spent four mornings this week painting this corner - two mornings per painting. Enough time to meet and say hi to every dog, child, and art-friendly person in the neighborhood. Have I mentioned I love my neighborhood?

These are two very different paintings. The bottom one I did first, but after a while realized I saw a much more dramatic and interesting image in my head. So I started over and did the second painting (the top one) which I think is much more successful in terms of composition and color. I'd still like to try even stronger values, lights and dark... luckily with painting, there's always a "next time."

Everyone loves to see a painter on the street. People have good taste, too. When I feel confident that my painting is going well, lots of people confirm it with enthusiasm. But when a painting is in a "bad stage", no one says anything at all, at most a polite smile. Painting in public is humiliating and gratifying all at once.

Saint Ignatius Church studies

Study of St Ignatius as seen from Buena Vista Park I
oil on panel
9 x 12 inches

I love this church, it's called St Ignatius and it sits on the northern slope above Golden Gate Park's panhandle. In the afternoon and evening the western sun lights up the church in dramatic golden contrast to the blue hills of the Presidio and the Marin Headlands behind.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to try a value study of the church in paint, so the above painting uses only brown, blue, and white. For this view I climbed up the forested hill of Buena Vista Park a few blocks above my house and found a spot on a trail where I had a good view of the church.

Study of St Ignatius as seen from Buena Vista Park II
SOLD
charcoal on paper
about 12 x 16 inches

After struggling with the paint yesterday I resorted to charcoal today. Charcoal feels comfortable and familiar compared to messy, gooey paint.

A nice USF couple on mountain bikes stopped to say hi and took my picture. I gave them my card and they were nice enough to email me the photo! See how bundled up I am in coat and scarf... and this was the WARM day!

Plein Air at Carl and Cole

Crepes on Cole SOLD
9 x 12
oil on panel

Carl and Cole Train Tunnel
9 x 12
oil on panel

These were fun because I painted them almost right outside my house. I did them both yesterday: the train tunnel in the morning and the creperie corner in the afternoon.

For both these paintings I was set up near the train tracks and I had to pause every time the little municipal train went by and blocked my view. It wasn't a problem earlier in the day but as I finished up rush hour was starting and a train was going by one way or the other every few minutes! I didn't mind though because I love the train.

Train Tunnel Drawing

Train Tunnel at Carl and Cole, San Francisco
12 x 16 inches
vine charcoal on paper

Inspired by my plein air painting session with Mary yesterday, I decided to step out my front door today and try an outdoor sketch. This is a view of the entrance to a train tunnel in my neighborhood. I always admire the afternoon light bouncing in it and have been wanting to paint it for a while. I'm hoping to do a color painting, too. The tunnel interior is painted butter yellow and I just love how the curved shadow creeps around the inner surface. It gets a gorgeous reflected glow within the shadow.

I think one of my biggest problems with painting outdoors is that I am very shy to draw or paint where people can watch me. I hate anyone seeing my work before I feel it is in a good state. I've decided I have to get over this. So even though I live in a very pedestrian-heavy neighborhood I decided to brave the stares and set up right on the sidewalk. It was easier than I thought it would be.

I got a really nice compliment while working: A woman stopped and chatted with me, she said she was an artist too. She said she noticed that even though from far back the drawing is very hazy, that in fact close up there is a lot of structure. Structure!! I've been working explicitly on structure for months so I was thrilled she chose this word. I thanked her profusely but I don't think she realized how much it meant to me.

Plein Air

View Through the Trees
9 x 12 inches
oil on panel

My friend Mary and I did a day of plein air painting together. My husband was confused as to why artists paint together, especially once I described that were set up far apart and barely spoke to each other all day except to share a couple snacks. But I explained to him that it's like meeting up with a workout partner: Someone to help you have the discipline to get out there, but it's not necessarily a social event. In any case, we had fun together, if only in the mostly non-verbal, co-solitary way two artists can have fun together. Hmmm.... "co-solitary", I just made that up and I think it's a good word!

Anyway, this first painting of mine (above) is very unfinished and I would have liked to work on it longer but after a couple hours all the shadows shifted around and absolutely everything had changed. I don't have much experience painting outside, and how anyone makes a fully developed landscape is a complete mystery to me.

Golf Course Grove
9 x 12 inches
oil on panel

Here I've made basically a value painting, color has nothing to do with it. It's just a range of pale yellow through dark green. I think I need to do some landscape painting copies to find out how people get color into their landscapes. Also, I have to figure out how to handle the foreground, this painting is dying for a foreground.

I'd also like to note that California trees are just weird. I grew up on the East Coast, and even though I've lived in SF for 8 years, I never get used to the Dr Seuss vegetation. These are pine trees, and yet the tops are flat. Where I come conifers look like proper Christmas trees!

Marin Headlands
9 x 12 (detail)
Oil on convas paper (bleh)

I only worked on this for less than an hour, and the overall painting is weak but I decided to post this portion because I had so much fun painting the rolling hills and eroded cliffs of the Headlands across the Bay. The hazy fog-filtered light on the distant hills allowed only a small range of color and value, so I had to mix very subtle color steps to describe the forms. It was a good exercise because it made me realize I often rely to much on dramatic value changes and I need to remember you can can really describe a lot of form with only very subtle shifts.

Ted Seth Jacobs - Drapery Study

Drapery Study I
graphite on paper
18 x 24 inches (detail)

Drapery Study II

graphite on paper
18 x 24 inches (detail)

I've just finished 12 weeks studying drawing with Ted Seth Jacobs at BACAA. We spent the final week modeling a satin jacket which was put on a mannequin. It was an amazingly difficult final project, it really felt like a test of everything Ted has been teaching us about how to analyze three dimensional form.

These are the 4 main principles Ted taught us to apply when analyzing form:

Convex Form
Everything in nature is curved, nothing is flat. All of these curves are convex, there are no concavities. If you look closely at a seemingly-concave drape or indentation, you can always see small convexities along it. This is evidence of the underlying structure. (It sounds implausible, everyone doubts it when they first hear it, but try seeing it, it's there).

Wide to Narrow
Nothing in nature is parallel, every shape starts wide on one end and gets narrow on the other. A shadow shape will always be a fan, not a square or rectangle. Use this concept to "shape the light".

Rounding and Ending
Every shadow rounds over a curved surface and ends before the next form begins. This means every form shadow has a soft edge and a hard edge. Think about the direction of the light - generally the edge of a shadow closer to the light source will be soft, and the edge away from the light will be hard.

What's in Front
The only point on an object not foreshortened is the point directly in front of your eye, everything else is foreshortened. That means every form is in front of or behind another. There are thousands of tiny "horizons", the edge of a shape we look across to see the next shape.

The hardest part is that all of these principles apply to every form. A rounding-and-ending shadow has a wide-to-narrow shape and it always describes a convex form which is in front or behind something else.

What I Wish I Learned in Art School

I went to art school because I loved to paint and draw as a kid, and I wanted to be an artist. I didn’t really know what an artist did. Four years and 80 thousand dollars later, I graduated from art school with only a vague idea of what an artist did, and a very fractured portfolio made up of a hodge-podge of homework assignments and figure drawings.

After art school I spent years floundering and did not make enough money to support myself even marginally until several years after college. I felt blindsided - I’d been very successful and my teachers told me I was talented, so I though an "art career" would magically unfold before me.

Only now, 15 years after graduation, do I have an idea of what I should have been taught about how to "be an artist". Lucky you, I am going to share for free what an 80K education should have taught me.

If I were advising an art student now, this is what I would tell them:

Decide what you want to do
For someone who likes to draw and paint in high school and wants to draw and paint for a living, there are essentially two routes: Illustration, where other people pay you to create what they want, and Fine Art Painting, where you create what you want and hope other people buy it.

(There are a lot of other art careers, but I'm just focusing on what I wish I'd been told, as someone who just wanted to paint and draw with traditional materials.)

Illustration
Illustrations are the drawings and paintings you see in magazines, newspapers, on book covers, and in advertising. Publishers and ad agencies hire freelance illustrators to make those drawings and paintings. A successful illustrator has a consistent flow of freelance illustration jobs, and hopefully earns a living at it.

Fine art
Fine art paintings are sold in galleries to people who want to have original art in their homes and offices. A successful fine artist develops relationships with galleries, consistently shows and sells their artwork, and hopefully earns a living at it.

Research art schools
Not all art schools are the same. Some art schools are better for fine art, some are better for commercial art/illustration. Some are more expensive than others – a lot more expensive. Pick an art school that will help you achieve your goals. Visit schools and ask lots of questions about what their graduates do, and what the school does for career counseling. Be specific about what you want.

What to do while you are in art school
By the end of senior year you need to have a portfolio of 10-20 works of art that hold together as a group and look like one person made them all. If you want to be an illustrator, develop a portfolio of illustrations all in one distinct and cohesive style.

If you want to go the fine art gallery route, pick a theme and do a series of paintings on that theme. Show that you can work hard and consistently to make a cohesive body of work.

Portfolio development takes forethought and planning. You won’t have a cohesive portfolio if you just gather up all your art school homework assignments and call it a portfolio. Art school should teach you this. It doesn't.

What to do after graduation
The minute you leave art school, if not before, professionally photograph your portfolio, and start to submit your artwork. Submit your illustration portfolio to small local magazines and print publications. Submit your fine art portfolio to local galleries and art fairs. Submit to contests and juried shows and apply for grants. Submit over and over and over. Assume you will get lots of rejections, even if you were successful and "talented" in art school.

For Illustration
Do illustration jobs for free or very cheap at first so you have professional pieces in your portfolio, not just school assignments. Over time you will replace the college projects with professional work. Publications who hire you to do illustrations need to have an idea of what the finished illustration will look like based on your previous work, and they need to know you are reliable and will finish the project, so present your work accordingly.

For Fine Art
If you want to go the gallery route, this is the most important thing you need to know about being a gallery artist: Galleries need to see that you can produce a consistent output of paintings at a consistent level of quality. Galleries are a business and they need to know you are reliable. Some galleries won’t even consider painters who don’t have a master’s degree so you might need more school. Grad school will teach you how to produce consistently, and they will teach you talk and write about your work.

No one ever told me these things at art school. As an artist you have to think of your artwork as a product and you have to learn to market and sell your product. Most artists don’t like to do this. But most artists also don’t like to operate cash registers or serve food either.

LINK:
This blog post Is Going to Art School Worth It? is a great article about deciding whether to go art school.

Venus de Milo (in progress)

Drawing of the Venus de Milo (in progress)
18 x 24 inches
charcoal on paper

(I already posted this photo but I thought it would be nice to see it near the updated drawing)

I spent a long time today refining the contour before I started shading, but I forgot to take a photo at that point.

It helps to have worked out the contour before the modeling. Even so, I am having a really hard time with the face. I've made her looks like she is glaring at something intensely, so I'll have to work on that.

All that drapery is going to be challenging...

TSJ Portrait Workshop: Bridgette

Bridgette
18 x 24 inches
graphite pencil and white chalk pencil on toned paper
about 20 hours

I experimented with a new technique with the white chalk. Unfortunately, what Ted is teaching requires so much modeling, I don't think it works well with the chalk, which gets ground in and over-manipulated in trying to get very fine detail.

Besides all that, I am happy with the drawing, especially how it compares to my first portrait of Bridgette I did 9 months ago. I feel like in this new drawing there is more a sense of the dimensional feel of the landscape of her skin. When I am drawing now I feel like my pencil is actually touching the surface of the form, like sculpting. Previously I only thought about copying lights and darks, so this is a totally different approach for me.

I do think a combination of the two is best. I first have to "flatten" my vision and record the major proportions without thinking of them as three-dimensional, in order to get the proportions right. But when the major proportions are set, there is a sense of switching to a different mode, thinking in 3 dimensions, and looking very closely at the surface, watching how it undulates towards and away from the light, and towards and away from the picture plane.

I think if you look at my first drawing, you'll see that there is no sense of being able to touch the surface of Bridgett's skin, it's just flat blankness.

I have no idea how anyone ever did or does portrait commissions from life. The pressure to achieve likeness in as short a time as possible must be tremendous.

TSJ Portrait Workshop: Melissa

Melissa
18 x 24 inches
pencil on paper
about 30 hours

Despite some problems with the drawing, this is probably the best likeness I have ever done. I may have made Melissa look slightly more gaunt and maybe slightly older than she is, but the proportions and placements I feel are pretty reminiscent of her as a specific person.

I feel like Ted's lessons are really starting to sink in, and my drawing is much improved since I started working with him. He's taught me to think of the 3-dimensional forms of what I am looking at (and subforms, and subforms and subforms...), and to try to understand everything in 3 dimensions, instead of just "copying" a pattern of lights and darks. The result is a much more solidly volumetric drawing.

Next week we will be drawing Bridgett, whom I first drew last year, and I can't wait to compare the drawings and see what I have learned.

I've also started experimenting with softer (darker) pencils. I usually use hard pencils, 2H and H, and just gently go over and over to build up the tone. But for this drawing I tried using a combination of 3B and H pencils. I really liked the effect, much larger range of value.

A weird effect is happening in my eyes recently. I am looking very closely at the model, and I guess I am really staring for quite a long time, because sometimes when I look at my paper to draw I am momentarily blinded. Instead of my paper and my drawing, I see the after-effect of the model's image burned into my retinas. It's very disconcerting.

Aside from classwork, this is a sneak preview of what I am working on in my studio right now:

TSJ Portrait Workshop: Melissa's Profile

Melissa's Profile
18 x 24 inches
graphite pencil on paper
about 20 hours

This is the drawing I did the third week of Ted Seth Jacob's portrait drawing class. This doesn't actually look much like Melissa.

TSJ Portrait Workshop: Mona

Mona

18 x 24 inches
graphite pencil on paper
about 40 hours

My second Ted Seth Jacob workshop just finished it's 4th week (of 6) and I thought I would post what I have been working on. This drawing of Mona was from the first 2 weeks of the class.

Most of the students in this workshop were also in last November/December workshop, so Ted is showing us how the principles he taught us for figure drawing apply to portraiture.

I have to say, portraiture is very very hard. Struggling to get a likeness had reduced me nearly to tears more than once these last few weeks.

Ted always says "you must allow yourself to relax and be open and receive all the information coming into your eyes." I really agree, because I'm finding that forcibly trying to spear a likeness instead just chases it away.

Something about the human face makes us even more critical I think. The ability to recognize a face is hard-wired into our brains, and so we all have a highly developed ability to distinguish faces from one another by minute differences. But seeing the inaccuracies and being able to fix them are not the same thing.

White Pitcher with Tulips SOLD

9 x 12, oil on panel

After my little monochromatic studies last week, I decided to try a larger color painting. I painted this over two days, about 3-4 hours per day. The progression is below:

I started with a quick drawing. I spent an hour just doing a basic block-in with pencil on paper, to work out the composition and get the main proportions right. It's tempting to skip this step, but it saves so much time and struggle with the paint later on.

Next I tranferred the drawing to the panel. I use transfer paper, which is a tissue paper with a thin layer of graphite coating one side. I taped my panel to my table, taped a piece of tranfer over that with the graphite-side down, and then I taped down my drawing over it, pressing the corners to match up the drawing to the panel underneath. Then I traced the major lines of my drawing with a hard pencil.


After I transferred my drawing, I went over the faint graphite lines on the panel with a brown extra-fine sharpie. Some people use a quill pen and sepia ink. That's too much work for me, but I would like to find a lighter-colored sharpie.

This is my drawing taped below my panel. The drawing has a lot more detail, so I ended up taping it off to the right so I could see it while I worked on the underpainting.

This is the start of the underpainting using the wipeout method. I used mainly raw umber, with a little ultramarine blue and a little white mixed in. I used a Viva paper towel as a rag to wipe out the white areas. I love Viva paper towels, they are the best for painting - almost as strong as cloth and not many fibers.

More refined stage of the underpainting.


I started adding color. At this point I left the painting for another day.

The second day I just worked at refining my colors and getting more detail. The overall look at this stage was very impressionistic. I was trying not to blend very much, keep the brushtrokes visible. I tried to work from dark areas to light areas, mixing a lot of color into the midtones.

The final painting. I'd like to do just a drapery study sometime, it was really fun. The tulips were ideal flowers because they last a long time and don't change much over a few days. They stayed fresh because my studio is very cold. But as I worked with my space heater turned on, the flowers warmed up and opened. I have no idea how people paint flowers in detail... even stable ones like tulips move too much.

Finally, here's a picture of my current studio setup:

The large white panel at the top is a piece of foamcore I have hung from the ceiling, to block my still life setup from the skylight. The light from the skylight falls on my easel, but not on the still life.

I've lit the still life with my white light "daylight" lamp from the left side. I also tried clamping my palette to my easel, as you can see. I abandoned that after 1 day though, it was annoying. But I hate having one hand occupied holding my palette all the time.

One day I will find the perfect clamp that will hold my palette right where I want it....

Three Little Pitcher Studies

Pitcher Study I
5 x 5 inches, oil on panel

I spent a few days doing these little monochrome studies, to get the feel of the paint again. This was my first - the photo is a bit blurry, but the painting itself is pretty hazy, too. I was concentrating on keeping the paint nice and thin until the very end. I am also trying to leave my edges interesting, showing the layers and brushwork. I used raw umber, ultramarine blue, and white for all of these.

Pitcher Study II
8 x 8 inches, oil on panel

For the next one I started over with the same still life setup but on a larger panel. However I jumped in too fast and I got the paint too thick and I began to struggle with control. Also, this was my first drapery study in paint, and it was hard to work out the drawing aspect of it without doing a sketch first.

Pitcher Study III SOLD
5 x 5 inches, oil on panel

For my third try, I decided to go back to the smaller format and just take my time, go slow, and keep the paint thin as long as possible. I abandoned the drapery since I didn't want to take the time to do a sketch first.

This painting is not much to look at, it's tiny and brown and simple, so maybe no one else can tell what a huge step forward it is for me, but I am thrilled with it. Loose and precise are finding a happy balance here. I am not trying to make the paint do anything, I am letting it be paint.

Few Strokes. Light touch. Focus on the subject.

Few strokes.
Light touch.
Focus on the subject, not the painting.

These are the words I taped to my easel today. I have not touched a brush in 4 months - four months - so I needed to bring some guidance into the studio with me.

Those three points were things I have thought a lot about. The break from painting and the focus on drawing this past fall gave me time to get some distance and think about what I need to work on in the paintings.

Light touch
I have had an over-heavy hand. Especially when I start to get anxious about how the painting is going, I start to apply more and more pressure on the brush. Sargent told a student that the bristles of the brush should never touch the canvas, that there should always be a layer of paint between them.

Few strokes
Another thing I do is labor a painting. I put down paint in haste and spend stroke after stroke "correcting". I was so struck when I saw paintings by Seaton at Arcadia gallery in New York last summer. The reproductions don't show it well, but every mark is distinct. Nothing is blended, each stroke is left to be what it is. Too many brushstrokes in a painting ruin the painterly quality.

Focus on the subject
When a painting is going badly, I find myself looking at the painting a lot more than my subject. Juliette's painting workshop this summer taught me to spend a LOT of time looking at the subject. Slowing down and looking is a natural state for an artist - it's only when I get anxious and "in my head" that I only pay attention to the painting. Attention on the end result is disaster for a painting. A painting is only the evidence left behind after careful looking. I need to focus on the process, not the result.

Even with all this, I needed one more thing to take into the studio with me, one of my favorite quotes:

It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

When I found this quote a few years ago I felt such relief to hear the poet capture how I feel about beginnings. It's not enough to say I am often afraid to begin... it actually does feel violent.

So I promised myself all I had to do was get into the studio and make a few monochromatic marks. I wouldn't even attempt color. Just get some paint on the canvas!

Armed with all this I stepped into my chilly little studio, turned on the space heater, and started prying the lids off jars and paint tubes stuck shut for months. I poked around for a while, tidying up, tuning my radio to the classical station, straightening all the still life objects on my shelves, tracking down the good roll of extra-sticky masking tape I keep losing. I found a million things to do but finally my gessoed panel was mounted, my still life set up, blobs of raw umber, ultramarine blue, and white were on my palette, and my favorite set of brushes laid out.

And really, I had a great time. I love to paint! The results aren't really worth posting, just a tiny brown painting of a pitcher, but I just loved feeling the paint again. And I think I made some of my best marks yet - a light touch is the way to go.

More soon!

TSJ Workshop: Reclining Nude II

pencil on paper, 18 x 24 inches

I have now worked on this drawing for 2 weeks, or 10 sessions. See the earlier version here.

I have one more week left, so I have to decide what to do. Do I continue to modify and refine this drawing, or do I start a new one?

I've gotten some great comments from my artists group (we are a group of artists of all kinds, writers, animators, singers, and filmmakers, and we meet monthly to share our latest endeavors over wine and snacks.) Of course they said complimentary things, too, but they very astutely pointed out the places I am struggling.

I need to resolve some issues with her right shoulder, her back, and refine the face & hair a bit more. They loved the elbow, which is one of the last things I worked on, so maybe I will try to apply what I learned there to the back, which I worked on very early in the drawing.

I am really enjoying my workshop with Ted Seth Jacobs, he is teaching me new ways to understand what I am looking at. The elbow in the the above drawing is I think most evident of what I am learning.

Paris, 15 years later

I am very excited to learn that I have been accepted to a figure drawing program in Paris for three weeks in April 08. The course is taught by former students of Ted's who live and teach in France, their school is Studio Escalier. I studied at Parsons Paris for 6 months in college, back in 1993, so I am looking forward to visiting Paris as an art student once again, 15 years after the first time.

Notes from TSJ

I have transcribed some more of my notes from TSJ's teachings. These are some of his overall themes, the ideas he repeats no matter what specifics he is showing us:

"I am not your teacher: nature is your teacher. But you have to have knowledge of the principles of form to understand what nature is showing you. These principles are helpful only as far as they help us see nature. If nature disagrees with a principle, nature is right, the principle is wrong. Nature is our teacher always."

-- Ted Seth Jacobs

Contour

• Contour is not flat, it is moving in 3 dimensions, back and forward
• Every contour on the body is held in a balance of tension between opposing forces.
• Every change in the contour is a result of 3-dimensional form

Light and shadow

• Everything is divided into light and shadow. Always know whether you are working in the shadow or in the light. There is no such thing as “halftone”. There is only:
  Light light
  Dark light
  Light shadow
  Dark shadow
  Accent (the darkest dark)
  

See the model as a flat ribbon of light

• Squint your eyes to simplify the lights and darks
• Don’t worry about highlights, pay attention to the largest masses
  
  Ask yourself:
• Which end is closer to the light source?
• What is the tilt of the ribbon to the light?
• What is the lightest part of the pose?

Model the smaller forms in harmony with the larger value relationships.

Think about the three dimensional forms, not just a two dimensional pattern of lights and darks.

The edge of the shadow (also called the terminator, or core shadow) is not an impenetrable wall, there are forms criss-crossing through it

Shape the light to describe the form;
See what end is wider, which end is narrower; it’s often a “fan” shape, edges are never parallel

Form principles

• Even a concave shape is made up of tiny convex forms
• Each shape is a wedge that interlocks with other wedge shapes
• Find the specialness of each shape
• Make a portrait of each shape

We are not copying: copying is trying to capture what you see without understanding what you are looking at.
We are not representing reality; we are suggesting reality.

Abstractionism, Realism, and Honesty

A very good friend of mine is an abstract painter. We’ve been friends for 12 years now, and I’ve had the privilege of visiting her studio many times.

I know very little about abstract painting, but my friend seems to value my opinion, so she tells me a lot about her thought process, her technique, what she is attempting, whether she feels she fails or succeeds. I am always impressed by both the work itself, and what she puts herself through to make it.

She is as rigorous and self-disciplined as any traditional atelier-trained painter. She continually challenges herself, continuously refines her technique, and never allows herself to rely on cheap flourishes. Nothing is accidental, everything is deeply intentional, and not a mark is made without questioning her own intentions, conscious and unconscious. She has the deepest integrity an artist can have – she is brutally honest with herself. Her paintings are gorgeous and moving on every level.

However, as we talk about art, we sometimes come up against a wall, the divide between realists and abstractionists. Our visual goals as artists are quite different.

There is a huge division between the world of abstract painters, who are concerned with surface, and the world of realist painters, who are concerned with illusion. Interestingly, both sides would probably use the word “decorative”, with a sneer, to describe the other.

When I hear realist artists deride abstract artists, or vice versa, I wonder why each threatens the other so much. Both sides tend to cite the worst or most extreme examples of the other to characterize these two large and varied movements.

Many artists on both sides are doing the hard work of excavating truth. On the other hand, in both realist and abstract art, there are dishonest artists. Dishonest artists make paintings with the main goal of shoring up their ego, instead of the goal of revealing truth, connecting with the universal.

When evaluating art, whether realist or abstract, I ask myself "is the artist being honest with herself?" Everything comes into focus when this question is asked.

Derision tells us nothing about the art and everything about the critic.

Whether abstract or realist, only honesty counts.