Some Figure drawings

     I've been teaching Drawing I for the past 3 years at the College of Charleston; 2 classes per semester, 2 days a week. It's been a good change for me, as I was in the decorative painting field as my 'day job' while I was in New York City. Teaching has given me the opportunity to organize my thoughts about Art (drawing) and pushed me out of my comfort zone, both by talking in front of groups of students, and also one on one. The politics of 'academia' and teacher compensation aside, I still believe that teaching is a valuable asset to my studio work and our community in general, and I keep doing it for the 3 or 4 stellar students each semester that I feel like I'm passing the torch to. I've had numerous teachers over the years that have made a big impact on me, both professionally and personally, from which to learn from.
     My favorite part of the semester is always when we get to draw from the model, which I usually save for the end. For a beginning class like this, I usually emphasis gesture and form, over anatomy and proportion. We do a lot of quick gesture drawing and short poses in order to have the students sync their eye-hand-mind together. I usually start with a demo, to try and walk them through how I would approach the drawing problem at hand. Here are a few recent ones, all vine charcoal on 18" x 24" paper:

reworked self portrait

28" x 21"

      I've had this self portrait in my painting rack for about a year; never quite finished it and never quite satisfied with the way it came out. It is based on a photograph I took in my studio a few years ago. The image was striking to me, with my reflection captured in the set of double doors in my studio at night. The way the camera (IPhone) lined up with my head, obscuring my face, was an interesting self portrait, perhaps proving to be a better photograph than a painting, though. Anyway, I put it away after working on it for a few weeks, and forgot about it.   A few weeks ago I pulled it back out, with the intention of starting back into it. As I was looking at it on the wall, I noticed my reflection over my left shoulder. Same interior, but scaled out a little bit; now my whole body was reflected in the doors. Some of the elements lined up to what was already there, but for the most part I dove right in and started blocking in the new painting:

 

      I usually don't like to paint over old paintings, mainly because some of the painting underneath can pop through in the form of ridges and edges, which can be distracting and a nuisance to paint over. This time I didn't mind so much; the previous painting created a bedrock of paint, which I was able to add to for it's current iteration.
     I've included details and progress shots here, mostly of the figure. I like to have a night painting to work on in addition to the plein air work that I do during the day; it gives me something to work on in the studio at night a few days a week.

 

     I'm still not sure if it's done, but I think it's close...I don't want to paint over the looser and more raw elements. I like how your eye bounces around the painting, picking up the various reflections and different light sources throughout, and how the motif of the door/glass reiterates the implied picture plane.

Self Portrait

   Here's the progression shots for this recent self portrait. I've done many over the years, and its become a great way for me to mark my time, to try and struggle to capture a likeness, to create a volumetric form with paint and soul...The first session was spent blocking in the tones and shapes with a palette knife. The second and third session were spent refining the light and modeling of form. I wanted to mantain the freshness and immediacy of the experience so I tried to paint fast and edit well.

stage 1: 14" x 12"

stage 2

Finished stage

   There's something very comforting, but very frightening, about the self-portrait. Comforting, in the sense that its an image and a form that you know the most...you feel the pose as you're painting it. Frightening, because you can slip into that area where you see yourself outside of yourself; yourself as a thing in the world. Each session was probably about 2 hours...maybe 6 hours total. My next portrait is of my wife, Faith, which I'm excited to start. My daughter's painting is about half done, so I'll probably write a post about them soon...

Portraits for the New Year

     Since the start of the New Year I've been working on a few portraits of my family. While I was trained as a figurative artist, it's been awhile since I've taken on paintings like these. At Syracuse University, I drew from the model 3-4 times a week, painted dozens of portraits, and worked on large figurative compositions. This continued after graduation, where I slowly starting incorporating the figure into different kinds of spaces, focusing on how this could contain a narrative, with symbolic meaning. Eventually, concerns about space and atmosphere took over and the figure disappeared; I shifted my interests to the landscape. Periodically I will draw portraits in my sketchbooks, but these new paintings are more sustained and concentrated efforts. The whole project started in preparation for a large family portrait that I wanted to give my wife for her 40th birthday this year. I figured I would start with individual portraits before jumping into a large scale figure composition. I think of these paintings not only as studies for that project, and as portraits that stand on their own.

oil on linen, 9" x 12"

     This first one is a painting of my youngest son, Griffin. He was about a year old at this point, and the painting is based on a photograph I took of him. With all of these portraits (at least the kids), I had to use a photograph as a starting point for practical reasons. But, I also wanted to utilize one of the powers that photography possesses: freezing a moment in time. With these, I captured that instant when somebody turns to look at you, before the self-conscious realization that they are going to be photographed.  Although a photograph was used as the starting point, gradually through working with the paint, it merged with the struggle to manipulate a surface, form, and color.

oil on linen, 12" x 18"

      The next one in the series is my oldest son, Jasper. The photo I took of him somehow captured a moment of transition; from a boy to a young man (he's 9 now). There's a look of confidence and cockiness here, and I can get glimpses of the man he will eventually grow into. I had this photograph on my computer and initially was going to crop it into the actual image that you see on the screen. I started painting it for a few sessions, with the computer propped up on my desk, working from what was on the screen. (If I do need to work from a photograph, I actually prefer using this method. Rather than a photographic print, where the color and light can flatten out, the back lit computer image is much brighter and crisper.) As I was painting, I began to wonder why I felt the need to cover my tracks, so to speak, with the computer reference...why not put the actual source material that's in front of me, into the painting? Not only was I creating this 'frame within a frame' composition, but by incorporating the computer in the painting, it began to reference our (my) collective use of computer mediated imagery in general, and more specifically, Jasper's immersion in the world of video games, IPhones and screen time.

oil on linen, 18" x 22"

     The next one is a painting of my wife sitting in my studio. I still consider it in progress, but I think I'm close to resolving everything. I've tried to do a few paintings with this long hallway in it before, but somehow none of them clicked, until now. Perhaps, all I needed was a person to anchor the space. I like how her head is framed by various sized rectangles: the large covered door on the right, the painting of our former house in Brooklyn above her head, and the deep receding space at the end of the hall to the left. That long, deep space down the hall, lit with a warm yellow glow from within, becomes the metaphor for her deep in contemplative thought. She becomes the still point in the composition, the anchor that holds all the patterns, lines and edges together. Also, the slight tilt of my head as I'm painting, not only echoes her posture, but funnels everything towards her face and down that hallway.

     I've yet to start the last painting of my daughter, but I've done a few pencil drawings of her in my sketchbook. Here's a few: