Light Profile

Drawing with a LED light pen.

Peter Drawing

A sketch of colleague and fellow artist, Peter Noonan. Made on our pilgrimage to the Brandywine Museum in Chadd's Ford PA. Oil on panel. 

Studies

I've been sick for the past several days so I've had some time to devote to a few studies.

Some Bargue Drawings:

[graphite & colored pencil on paper]

A Vanderpoel study:

[graphite on paper]

And a couple Zorn studies:

[graphite on paper]

[Golden Open Acrylic & charcoal on cardboard]

Dusk

Charcoal & acrylic on cardboard.

Lizzie

Here are some process shots of a painting I worked on for a few weeks back in August. It started as an idea in my head and evolved as I worked on it. This was an unusual painting for me because I rarely paint an image entirely from my imagination as I did here.

I started with a gouache sketch to get the basic design and pattern that I wanted. Because it can be re-wet, it's easy to move elements around  and make large adjustments. This was the only reference I used for the painting because I wanted to make sure that I maintained the pattern of lights and darks.

Then I started the painting on an 18x24" acrylic primed MDF board. I didn't use a preliminary drawing except for some lines with the brush that I soon obliterated. I wanted to work the painting in terms of shapes rather than lines. This first pass was done with OMS thinned oil paint.

I went in with more paint and tried to give some form to the figure and the rock formations. I was very dissatisfied with how unconvincing the dress and the arm looked at this point so I decided to wipe them out and try again.

Here it is with the dress & arm wiped back to a simple pattern. I left those areas alone and proceeded to articulate the cloud(or smoke?) form making sub patterns with the blue-greens to suggest patches of sky and water. I made the hair mass look more wind-swept and believable at this point; it was looking rather heavy before. I also started popping in light red-oranges in strategic spots on the figure, especially around certain edges. I wanted to have a glowing halation effect around the skin to put some life into a rather cold picture.

The palette knife offered a sound solution to my struggle: I could create variation through texture within the masses while still preserving the proper value. I used the knife to paint the dress with subtle variations suggesting form and translucency in certain areas. The broken color and value shifts gave a satisfying shimmer to the dress. I also started knifing on an initial layer of white in the back. I planned on building it up further after it dried.

The finished painting. I really tightened up the face and built up some nice texture in the cloud/smoke mass that I lightly glazed over for a richer look. One nice thing is that I kept pretty faithful to the basic design. Any deviations from my original sketch were ideas that came to me mid-process and were (for the most part) improvements.  

More Work

My offerings for the week:

A couple drawings...

[graphite on paper]

[graphite on paper]

And a Zorn study:

[acrylic on cardboard]

Interior Figure

Acrylic on Cardboard