Figure Modeling class started

I'm back to school for a my Summer class, Figure Modeling. I've never attempted sculpture before, but as I become accustomed to working in this new medium, I'm finding that I actually enjoy sculpting. I would howver like to try out an oil based clay instead of the water based that we're using for this class.

Once I complete a piece worthy of being photographed I'll be sure to post images.

The initial block-in

1. Envelope - Start with straight think lines. This will give you room for later adjustments with proportions and straight lines are easier for us to measure.

2. Big Shapes - Break your subject up into three to five simple shapes.

3. Measure - Measure your subject to find your vertical half and then find quarters. This will be what you use to measure the rest of your subject to get correct proportions. If needed you can break it further into eighths.

4. Angels, Allignment and Animals - In this step you're going to make sure that your angels and allignments are correct. This is where the thick lines come in handy. You can start to erase what's not needed to start refining your block-in. Use other angels to compare against. You want to ensure that your block-in is as accurate as possible before moving on. The animals was difficult for me, but basically your taking your simple shapes and finding a particular animal that the shapes look like. This helps you to really look at the form with new eyes and simplify the shapes. This exercise didn't quite work for me.

Shadow side was filled in right away with no adjusting. You start with the actual value of your shadow side. No building up.

Rendering form

1. Gradation - Go from point A, the furthest point away from the light to point B, highest form light, NOT THE HIGHLIGHT. This has been one of my faults.

2. Planes - Build your planes as if your subject were covered with little tiles. This is going to take some getting used to. This was pretty difficult for me being that I'm used to a more optical way of seeing vice a conceptual.

3. Marble - What I took from this was that this was a sort of refining stage. You have to basically feel as if you're rolling a marble over the form. This will help you refine any values that are further away or closer to the light source.

All in all it was a great workshop and I learned a lot. Some of this I will take with me and some I'll modify, but I do think that all I learned will help improve my drawing significantly. Also, these are my notes and not the exact words of Angela Cunningham. I've regurgitated a lot of this in my own words. Feel free to take from it what you will. Hope that it's been informative.

So, something I'm slowly learning over time and with each new painting. I need to sloooowww dooowwwwnnnn. Especially in the begining with my monochromatic underpainting. It's amazing how much I learn with each new piece. Of course the downside is once I've learned something new, I look back at the previous painting and begin to dislike it. :)

Here are a couple of new paintings in the works. This little piece is an 8x10 oil on panel. I've not painted a lot of fabric and I'm finding that I picked a pretty difficult piece to paint. I thought it was finished, but feel that I need to go in again and make quite a few adjustments to the cloth to give it more depth

This piece is currently on the easle and it's a sort of Allegory of my wife Jenniffer and me. The background is a drawingboard I use with a small engraving of Florence which is in Tuscany where we were married. The wine box is from the actual place we had our wedding. The wine is one of favorite reds. The small seashell is from our first trip to the beach here in Charelston and the books are our two areas of study. The candles and the single tack have significance as well.

Please excuse the poor quality. These were taken with my phone. I'll be sure to take some better photos once it's complete.

So I figured I would post some images of what I've been working on lately. These are all from my recent Intermediate Figure Drawing class from The Academy of Art Online. All are charcoal which I'm starting to enjoy working with. I used to cringe at the thought of using charcoal, but that was mainly because I wasn't nearly as good at controlling the medium. After using it for the past 4 months, I've really started to enjoy it.
That's not to say that I no longer like graphite. I think I'll always love graphite and will find myself going back to it more often. I just feel that I have more of a range now not being restricted to one medium.

Angela Cunningham workshop

Just finished my first workshop with Angela Cunningham on Rendering the Figure in Graphite. I realized  that I've been using a much more optical way of seeing where Angela was teaching us to see in a more conceptual way.
Learned a lot about seeing form and how light reacts with that form.
I've been mistaking dark halftones for shadows all this time. I really need to start working on identifying the true shadows and leave the dark halftones for the rendering.

Thanks Angela for a great class. I look forward to doing this again.

For those interested is seeing Angela's work swing by her site, http://angelacunninghamfineart.blogspot.com/

Busy Busy Busy

So, I've been slacking quite a bit with my blog and my site now that I've started my classes again.
I've been learning a good deal in both my intermediate figure drawing and my intro to painting the figure classes. Mostly of what not to do and my weaknesses, most of all my values. I seem to be leaving out a great deal of transistions in the midtones. This piece is a great example.

On top of my values giving me issues, I continue to struggle with charcoal. I love the quality of charcoal, but I just can't seem to control it like I can pencil. Maybe this is something I should work on. Maybe I try to be too tight in my drawings and should learn to loosen up more? I have been using pencil with vine to mass in my darks and this has actually been pretty interesting. I'm going to experiment with this a bit more. I'll do my best to continue posting on a more regular basis and I'll try and get some more images up here.