Thursday, January 24, 2008

TODAY'S WORK ON JANUARY PAINTING #4


I wasn't going to post as I didn't do a whole lot on this painting today, but I changed my mind as I decided to document the different stages. This painting has a soft quality so I thought graphite would be a better choice than charcoal, so I started laying in value with the graphite stick. I have seen some very interesting and effective paintings that have a grisaille under painting of graphite. I have never tried that, so here was my chance. Tomorrow I will finish this painting. Don't be surprised if it takes on a very different character. I don't do high key paintings very well. I love drama and strong value changes. I am really feeling a strong urge to punch it up a bit! I'll start with going over the graphite with color and see how it looks and then decide what direction to go in. I probably will need to do another painting that follows the constraints I set out to do...shape as dominant element and cruciform as compositional design.

I also worked on the Kaleidoscope image. It is moving toward the finish line soooooo slowly, but ever so steady.

I had some time this morning before I left for critique group to work with the pose maniac website. I keep a phone book under my desk for the drawings. It is so freeing to have tons of pages available and not caring if I mess up. Today I decided to start with the pose of the day and take my time. You can rotate these poses so I did several versions. Then I went to the negative shape ones and did contour drawing for awhile. Lastly I tried the 10 sec. poses!!!! It was interesting watching myself adapting to the pressure of time as I altered how I drew to finish in the 10 seconds! Because I am sitting in front of the computer to do this, I am working much smaller than I normally do. I was thinking it would be an interesting challenge to fill in the missing lines in the negative drawings as they are silhouettes. These are not timed views so you can sit there as long as you need to get the drawing completed. I thought some of them had intriguing possibilities combined in a composition.

So many ideas, so little time!

3 comments:

lynlynch said...

My Alex Powers book is as loved as yours. Recently I went too dark on a b/g painting so poured Gesso on the darkest part. Rolled it around a bit and laid it flat to dry--it's good.

As nava said, the dreamy effect is working well in this piece--I want to stare at it to see if I can make out the intent of the Cruciform shape and I can't, as you said.

I love this reference.

Joan said...

I can see you defined the shape of her chin a bit more in this. I'll be back to see what "drastic" changes you make to this.

Nava said...

I admire the haunting quality of this one. And the push-pull play between the background and her hair.

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