Week 6 Putting It All Together

What a great model we had today, Miles Cobos. It was his first time modeling, and we all are hoping he will come back for a painting session. Today we talked about some of the areas outside the concentration of the features: the hair, the ear, and the neck. We talked about some of the traditional conventions people use in landscape painting and how we can apply that to the portrait. Specifically, hard and soft edges, high contrast forward, less contrast in back. Even in our short poses, we strive to make good observation of these "outer areas" of the portrait. We looked at a diagram of a sphere to see simple versions of shadows and darker core shadows close to the source of light. We are learning to apply this to shadow observations of the face.

Week 6 putting it all together, Part 2

Our group has really progressed in ability in just 6 weeks. Take a look back to week one in the older posts and see how far everyone has come. Very impressive and my congratulations to all that participated in our "New York" style class.
Coming next session, beginning painting the portrait, starting March 14th.
In drawing we think with line, in painting we will be thinking in shapes and the planes of the face.

Week Five..... the Nose

Today we talked about the five basic areas of the nose, the keystone at the bridge, the top, the sides and the underside. We noted that a nose is not straight, but follows the bone and 2 cartilage areas. We talked about the shape of the nostrals and how they change depending on the forward and back angle of the head.
Everyone is interested in continuing our class in March, we are thinking about working with paint, simple value paintings to begin with. More to come as that developes.
All of our class poses are fairly quick, 5 to 8 minetes, no one gets to finish their drawings. I like everyone to set up over and over and over again, that is how we learn. In our painting class we will have one long pose, 2 and 1/2 hours, with breaks of course for the model.

Week Five, the Nose Part 2

Our model Madelaine Marinkovitch was fantastic today. She inspired a lot of good work everyone is progressing. Our homework assignment is to do a self portrait. Spend about an hour on your drawing. It's nice to do a self portrait and be able to see details up close.