Nothing strikes more fear into my heart than hearing, "I think we need to try one without the hour time limit…" Sure I haven't beat the clock once, and yeah, its forced me to make choices faster than I can comfortably handle, but now there is no bell to save me! How will I keep from overworking it and beating it to death? How many times will I fix the wrong thing and wind up dragging new strokes over the terrain of the old dry ones like I am petting a cat the wrong way? When will it end and how can it possibly end well?
Though the first line of his instructions had me panicked, Terry reassures me before signing off, "You may end up noodling and overworking, but let's not worry about that too much this round." Ok, so thats a given, phew. But between this promising to be exceptionally hard, and the first rounds of March Madness tipping off, I had more than enough fuel for procrastination. Somehow I managed to grab the highlighter off of my NCAA bracket (I can't help but print it and grade it the old fashioned way) and review the keys to this assignment:
Edge Control
•Soft edges where the form turns
•Vary the softness depending on how quick the form turns; tighter radius = sharper edge
•Figure out stroke direction of foreshortened shapes (sharp edges are counter to foreshortening illusion)
Aslo Notable
•Paint light area physically on top of shadow
•Shadows should be subordinate to the light, less prominent
•Knock down the intense red of the underpainting w black or blue
And my favorite part
"Focus on creating hierarchy of depth from the tip of the nose to the background by paying more attention to edge control that you have ever done in your life!"
Good one Terry
This was really hard. I have all kinds of room for growth in edge control. I literally let this painting dry several times and had to liquin back into it to continue working. I am not sure that any of the last few hours really improved the situation either. I mixed the brown and blue together to knock the red out of the underpainting, but the drawing was still to heavy handed. A very bad sign when the assignment is edge control. Isn't that essentially brush control? Shouldn't the drawing be the easiest place to get that right? Uhoh.
This time I made sure to keep the Assaro 'planes of the head' model near for reference. The simplified head is very helpful in translating Sorolla's work, and easier to see than the small image in my book. In all honesty, I didn't decide I was done because I stepped back and saw at last a superb product, but rather because it felt like I was beating a dead horse.
Here is the iphone in-progress play by play
Thrown in the towel
Benito 4
Looks like the stroke describing the inside corner of his left eye cuts to far or to sharply into the iris- pretty wonky. The dark wrinkle extending laterally from his left eye also seems too sharp. The chin feels too flat, as well as the hair line. I don't feel the recessed depth of the brow ridge either. At least his nose feels like its popping out. I feel like I have a long way to go on edges. Maybe its time to put the head away for awhile and take out an orange!
Comparison of Benito 3 (from last assignment) & Benito 4
Here's to growth!