"Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to great places. You’re off and away." (Oh the places you'll go, Dr. Seuss, 1990, Random House, pg. 1) This has been a key focus of our night-time reading lately. It has held our girls attention, at least, as well as can be expected for their ages.
2010 is off to a good start and I feel like I'm off to great places. My studies at the Grand Central Academy of Art are progressing well. Sometimes it is discouraging to recognize how far I still have to go, but every once in awhile you get a glimpse of where you are and can see how far you've come. January has done that for me. Painting presents a lot of new and frustrating problems, but as I began my new cast painting this month (the bust) I realized, to some relief, I have learned something. I shared the drawing with you last post. Since then I painted a value study to understand the organization of the values on the cast (essentially how much light each area is receiving). The director of the school mentioned last week he wants to see us get through cast painting much quicker than we are doing currently. The whole idea behind cast painting is to learn the process of painting and how to turn form in paint (make it look 3-dimensional). After I complete this cast I will paint a sculpture (full figure) and then move on to painting the figure and probably doing a little work in figure sculpting. I have also included my wipe-out of this cast. You apply a some what even layer of paint and wipe away the lighter areas. This creates a feeling of 3-dimension that is the base or platform you paint over.
I was also excited that I finished my figure drawing for the first time. I say finished, which really is a relative term... really it seems like it is never finished, but I mean that I made an attempt at every part of the body. Some of the things that came out of my critiques this month follow: Overall the block-in is good and seems to be getting better and better every month. I need to maintain that progression. The turning of form is better, but can still be better. The half of the form that receives the majority of the light is getting too dark. Light as it falls across the form from direct light to the terminator or shadow is not a linear relationship. In other words the amount of light that falls off of the form as you move from light to shadow or absence of light is not the same. The light falls off exponentially. The areas closest to the shadows can probably drop slightly in value and the areas closes to the direct light need to lighten up. I also need to put some work into drawing hands. I'm looking forward to getting started next month.
Sorry I forgot to take pictures of the ecorche in progress. I'll get something up soon. Right now I have the skull, rib cage and pelvis sculpted. I'm happy with the results.
