Hue Family Practice

Man, am I feeling more balanced.  After a couple weeks in the high intensity range of life, I am grateful to have made some space to catch up on my spreadsheets, go through the junk drawer, and paint!  Yesterday morning I made tea and spent yet another second missing the chance to be on the beach with my boyfriend this weekend, and then an additional moment wishing I was headed to the Badminton flush Easter dinner at my friends house, before getting back to work.  A session or two later when the gal at my favorite Indian Food spot, Bombay, asked me how many people I was ordering delivery for, I would only divulge that I wanted three sides of rice so there were leftovers.  It was a ton of food for one.  

Before getting to my head study homework I had to finish this still life for Sugar Shack, the shop I am hanging at in a couple weeks.  

'Fave Heel'

8x8"

Onto Hue Family Practice!  

The point that stuck with me the most from my last crit was that color family bit.  For this study I tried to keep this in mind and not push the light-dark value range AND the warm-cool too much at the same time.  This was done from Sorolla's Portrait of Vicente Blasco Ibanez… In just two hours I may have added 10 pounds.

The values get a little lost in the beard, but the lights aren't bad.  The light note on the bridge of the nose is too light, too big, and has too hard of an edge.  The tones as the forehead turns towards shadow are too cool, as well as the dark green note of the beard in the light side.  His right lower lip has a touch of cool that makes me want to run for the oxygen tank, but the value is pretty close to correct.  I really like the cool notes as his stubble bends back toward his right ear; I wonder if they are warm enough?

Its funny to see these two studies juxtaposed; I wasn't thinking about any of this when I painted the red pump.  It makes big temperature jumps.  Did I keep the values close enough?

Stay tuned for results show.

All in the Family

After drawing class Thursday morning, I was pumped and a little art-intoxicated as I lunched in the car en route to the dental office.  I was only able to attend 3 of about 12 classes during the first three month section, and poppin in for the last class I saw in the way of a time lapse how much everyone else improved!  It gave me hope!  And then gave me a swift kick in the pants.  

Sigh.

I was feeling left in the dust.

Thanks Mila the Cat for helping me feel through the blog this morning, perfect timing.

I have simply got to find a way to make more time for this… Working on it!

Regarding my last exercise, Benito round 4, Terry's crit commended some progress in realizing depth and awareness of the 'big sculpt', for which I was relived to hear.  The major issue with it was that I tried to push the depth a little too far and made the darks too dark.   Terry lays it out, "One of the fundamental rules of representational light and shadow relationships is that between light and shadow of a shared surface, you can have a big value jump or you can have a big color jump (temperature shift), but you can't have both."  So I made a big value jump but did not keep the light and shadow colors in the 'same hue family'.  I remember reading this excited to take it into the next study, and then I stepped back and looked at the result of that next study.  I may have done it again.  

Study of Sorolla's Santiago

(in progress)

About 1.5 hours later

The forehead is convincingly sculpted, but temporal shadow describing the left edge seems flat like a crack in the clock tower with the bit of light behind it too light and not falling back.  While the ears feel like they are pushed back, there is no feeling of side planes curving back to meet them and the nose is not popping.  So, this must mean the edges of the nose are too hard.  The eye sockets seem to have light on the upper lids where they should be in shadow.  In an attempt to redraw the mouth I got the darks too cool again!  From the in progress pic it looks like I started with barely a value difference between light and dark, and then I must have over compensated.  The shadow along his left side is a big value jump to the 'too dark side' and possibly too cool as well.  Sometimes I feel like I am taking a step back in results but there is definitely much more happening in my head!  This is definitely going to pay off!  Some day.