TSJ Workshop: Melissa, Day 1 and Day 2

pencil on paper, 12 x 18 inches, detail
Day 2

Block-in stage
Day 1

This is the drawing I am working on in Ted Seth Jacobs' workshop. This will be a 2-week pose, so I am trying to take my time. After I refined the block-in, I focused mainly on the feet. I'll move to other areas each day.

(You can see Ted's sketches of the structure of the foot and head in the top image, which he drew for me when he came around to critique my drawing.)

I have lots of notes from the last few days, will write them up soon!

TSJ on "Structure"

graphite on paper (detail)

18 x 24 inches, graphite on paper

Ted lectures in the mornings, and in the afternoons we draw from the model.

Below I've summarized some of his concepts and diagrammed my drawing to show how I am attempting to apply his techniques:

Contours, (the visible "lines"), are affected by the bulges and masses which make up the structure of the body. There are NO concave lines, because the human body is full and has volume. Even very slender people have substantial mass and volume. A concave contour is actually made up of a series of small convex forms.

I've traced the contour lines I drew as they enter the body and correspond to interior structural masses.

These contour lines are arranged, visibly or invisibly, along the body. The structural masses are arranged along these pathways, making a basketweave pattern throughout the form (under and over, in a network).

Structures of the body are arranged in "families" of forms. Each structure has a rounded shape, growing darker as it turns away from the light.

The darkest edge of a form usually ends just before the lightest edge of the next structure, creating a layering of forms and sub-forms.

Ted on Organization of the Body:

The hallmark of the classical approach to drawing is that nature is organized.

Everything is designed with an economy of space, form, and function.

Features of the body are never like snowballs thrown on randomly.

See every point in relationship to the whole; nothing is in the right place until everything is.


Ted on "Structural Pathways"

All the forms of the body are arranged on curving pathways, never straight or angular.

These pathways create a network, like a hairnet.

Pathways exist in 3 dimensions like a basketweave - sometimes on the surface, sometimes burrowing underneath.

Pathways exist in two sets of arches, some arching up and some arching down.

Ted on Structural Forms:

Structure is a vocabulary of forms.

Shapes grow on the body outwards: ample, convex, superimposed, smaller in top of each other.

Universal structural shapes are modified by gesture: squashed, stretched, twisted.

Sometimes forms are so modified they are unrecognizable.

See how these structures are perceived through the actions of light.

Forms are layered - every form can be reduced to its underlying mass.

The body is not a smooth surface, it is made up of specific shapes, it is "particulate".

Train your eye to see the "specialness" of each individual shape.

Continuity - everything in the body connects in a fluid, continuous manner.

Contour reflects the 3-dimensional structure of the form.

Ted on Perception:

Monocular vision (like a camera, or closing one eye) has less perception of form - two eyes "wrap" around the form.

Don't use tools like plumb lines and measuring rods - make yourself the measuring instrument.

Only one point of your subject is NOT foreshortened, the point directly in line from your eye. All other points on the subject are forshortened to a greater or lesser degree.

Drawing is all about recording what you see without being distracted by the symbolic, verbal, abstract symbols of what you are seeing (like the almond/dot egyptian symbol for "eye", which has nothing to do with what a real eye looks like).

My current favorite quote from Ted:
"Drawing is an exercise in human fallibility - it shows how wrong we can be."

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."

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.

More Notes From Dan Thompson

20 x 24 inches, oil on canvas

I thought I would show the progression of painting which Dan Thompson taught at our workshop, using various drawings and paintings I did during the two-week course at BACAA. (The earlier set of notes from the workshop is here.)

We started out drawing short poses, starting at one minute each and gradually increasing to one hour. The three following drawings were each one-hour poses. The basic steps were to block-in a line drawing of the major contours and shadow shapes. Then fill all the simplified shadow areas in with a single tone to create a two-tone drawing.

Next we started grisaille paintings, using flake white and raw umber on a neutral gray toned canvas.

20 x 24 inches, 1-day pose

The beginning of the second week Dan set up the model with a bright, artificial light shining directly up at her from a position on the floor, with brightly colored fabrics all around and behind. He covered the light with colored theater gels, so we could practice painting "just the light" without any local color. He cast first a cool light and then a warm light on each of the two setups. We were to block in the most basic, simplified shapes of color, and we only used a palette knife - no brushes. These are the 4 small paintings I created:

9 x 12 inches for each panel, 2 days of painting

This is where I started having a philosophical crises and found the exercise very difficult. Technically it was challenging, working in dim light for hours, trying to see very strange colors, wielding the awkward palette knife, only to create a very disharmonious paintings. But more than that, it was hard to keep the paintings truly perceptual, and not merely expressionistic.

Finally, Dan set up the model in a natural-light pose for the final three days. I did two paintings of the same pose, the progressions can be seen below:

20 x 24 inches, two days

I got a bit frustrated working on the above painting, so the last day I very quickly started over with the painting below, same pose but more closely cropped. The drawing suffers, but I think I began to get a glimpse of the color concepts Dan was trying to teach.

20 x 24 inches, 4 hours

Since Dan's class I have been very inspired to improve my figure drawing skills. Dan's knowledge of constructive anatomy is truly daunting, and I felt my clumsy attempts really got in the way of my painting. I bought several drawing books Dan recommended, and started studying from Bridgeman's Constructive Anatomy. This is one of the pages I sketched while on vacation the week after the workshop:

9 x 11 inches, or 3F size
pencil on paper
(Japanese Multi-Drawing Book is my current favorite sketchbook,
I draw on the backs of the pages as they have a smoother tooth)

It is certainly easier to draw from books than from life, but the understanding I am gaining will inform my life drawing.

Notes From Dan Thompson's Workshop

Dan's Painting Demo on AmericanArtist.com

I've had three days in Dan's 2-week class, and we've been learning his method for capturing the proportions and values of a figure. We've mostly done drawing exercises, no finished drawings and no paintings yet, so I don't really have anything visual to post.

A few notes, links, and ideas from Dan's class:

"The Human Figure" by Vanderpoel (Google Book link)
Dan recommends the 1920's version for better reproductions of the drawings.
UPDATE: Ebay got too expensive, but I found a reasonably-priced copy of a 1920's edition on Biblio.

Myron Barnstone
Both Dan Thompson and Juliette Aristides studied drawing and the Golden Section at the Barnstone Studio in Pennsylvania.

Reiley Lines
Six codified lines for defining a figure in any position. As his student says at the above link: "The six line figure is not the way to draw, it's the way to think"

Goldstein: The Art of Responsive Drawing

Steps for drawing the Figure:
1. Gesture
2. Proportion
3. Envelope
4. Light/dark block-in
5. Orientation: x, y, z

Balance the conceptual (what you know) with perceptual (what you see).

Tonal Relationships, 1-5 tonal scale
1. Block in only two tones, light and dark, for the entire figure
2. Tone all the light areas with a 2-value tone
3. Sketch in the darkest tonal accents ith a #5 value
4. Only apply #3 values at the end. Keep major tonal relationships constant.

Andrew Loomis

Howard Pyle

---------------------------------------------------------
Oh and a neat forum I found digging around online:
Society of Figurative Arts

Juliette Aristides Drawing Workshop Day 5

Charcoal & graphite on cream Rives BFK paper
Approx 19 x 22 inches

I have completed my week-long drawing workshop at the Bay Area Classical Artist Atelier. You can see the progression of my drawing and my posts about the week starting last Tuesday.

I finished my week-long drawing with an hour to spare, time I spent fiddling around and making small adjustments, which is always the fun part. I am really happy with it, even though I am more aware now than ever of what I need to do to learn more.

I really enjoyed the workshop. I think because so few people study this way, there is a real camaraderie. People have been sharing drawing tools, offering advice and being generally supportive all week. By the end, we were all exchanging email addresses and planning when we might see each other again at future workshops.

Juliette was a great teacher, her approach for executing a drawing is a method I have never been taught before. My drawing has some proportional errors still, but it is by far the most proportionally accurate figure I have ever drawn in my life. And I feel like I have new tools to apply to every drawing I do, whether in this highly detailed manner or a looser style.

Juliette Aristides Drawing Workshop Day 4

I have a lot to do tomorrow to complete the drawing, I'm a bit nervous about getting it all done in one day. The hand is what worries me the most - the contour drawing I did of it yesterday is just wrong. The model has long fingers, and I measured and measured, but I still exaggerated the length of her hand. So I'll have to completely redraw it tomorrow. Between that, the feet, the unfinished knee, and an overall polishing, there's easily 5 hours of solid work left.

I have started working into the charcoal with graphite pencil. It evens out the tones and I can get more detail, especially in the face. Pencil goes on fine, but charcoal frays the fibers.

A couple classmates have commented that I'm using the charcoal like graphite, I guess because there's not many rough charcoal strokes. It's mostly because I am battling with the paper. It has short, absorbent fibers, which fluff off the page with any amount of rubbing, so anything but the lightest touch makes the model look "hairy". Slightly frustrating, but it's all part of the learning process - I've learned to never use this paper again for charcoal.

I am still thinking a lot about what kind of artist I would be now if I had had 10 years of classical instruction already. And about what kind of artist I'll be ten years from now.

Juliette Aristides Drawing Workshop Day 3

Today was the third day of my week long drawing workshop with Juliette Aristides, and the second session of the drawing I started yesterday.

The photo above was taken about halfway through the day. You can see I completed the contour drawing of the hand and lower arm, which I left blank yesterday. The rest of the day I spent filling in the values.

I'm much more comfortable with this part of the process, I tend to think on tone instead of line naturally. But this process is still far more detailed than I usually work.

Instead of developing all areas of the drawing at once, like I have always been trained, we're being told to work on sections at a time - there's really no other way to do it. I am using vine charcoal sharpened to a fine point, almost as thin as a pencil point. And the paper is big - lots of space to cover.

Juliette instructed us to start by focusing on the core shadows (the darkest, middle part of the shadow as it falls across a curved surface) before we start filling in midtones and transitions.

The shot below is from the end of the day, you can see I've started filling in the midtones.

The hardest part of this drawing is by far the knees. They face almost directly at me. I haven't captured them believably yet, but I have two more days to try. It's tough anatomy to work out, lots of small edges of bones and tendons making their shadowy mark on the surface of the skin.

The hand is going to be hard, too. It's further along than yesterday, after I erased and redrew it about 8 times. But the tonalities will prove whether I have drawn a hand, or merely a rubber glove full of sticks and marbles.

Sorry for the bad photos.

Juliette Aristides Drawing Workshop

Approx 19 x 22 inches, vine charcoal on paper

I'm back! After weeks of house buying, packing, moving and unpacking, this week long workshop has begun just at the right time to get me back in the groove of daily art-making. Good thing, because between our cat going up the chimney, the hired movers pulling a no-show the day of the move, and being constantly surrounded by the smell of corrugated cardboard (which I hate) I've had just about enough of moving house.

We are working on a week-long drawing of a model in a single pose at this workshop with Juliette Aristides, along with some smaller exercises. Today was Day 2, but I started over with better paper than what I'd started with yesterday. The drawing above is the result of about 5 hours work today.

The approach is inspired by a traditional classical 19th century atelier method of learning to draw. So we're starting with a very careful line drawing as a base, attempting to get all the proportions as accurate as possible.

This method feels completely foreign to me. I am used to attacking the page with fistfuls of charcoal and battling it into submission by scrubbing away with an erasure to find the form. By contrast, this method feels more like spearing a fly with a needle - tiny strands flung over and over, hoping to pin some accuracy to the page.

I am enjoying myself, though, and so far I am happy with the drawing. I am looking forward to starting on the shadow values tomorrow, I feel much more comfortable with value than with line.

Juliette is a calm and patient teacher, she she teaches regularly at an atelier up in Seattle and seems very comfortable with leading a class. I found out from her bio that she is exactly the same age as me, which is daunting to say the least. But I try not to dwell on how much time I have lost and focus on what I am capable of learning today. Well, I try not to dwell on lost time, at least.

Juliette was talking today about how it used to be the norm for an artist to spend ten to thirteen years in formal study before they attempted to make unique work. I wonder what my work would be like now if I had spent that much time in formal study?

Would I have more or less of an idea of what makes a work "unique"? I am not sure "unique" exists. The most slavish copy has some of the artists' hand in it. And most "unique" work looks only like a typical product of the times a mere decade later.

I have learned that what I make never follows any sort of intention, whether to be unique or not. I make what I make, I can only do what is interesting to me. I have no control over whether it is culturally valuable or not. The only thing I do have control over is whether I make something today or not. And even that is tenuous at best.