The Space Between or Where Dragons Come From

The study of art may be, in fact, about the space between the strokes.  This is the space, or time, where observations, reflections, and decisions are made.  A great piece after all is the summation of a thousand great decisions.  This is where dragons come from.  Literally.  The Watt's instructors, and guys like them, are the real mother's of Dragons.  Look them up.

On a broader scale, this pursuit is largely dependent on the space between the classes.  It's a life style, really.  The truly great artists I have met work very hard, continually.  I have heard several atelier goers refer to Jeff Watts as the Tiger Woods of art.  They have a very similar training schedule.

In a head drawing class last night one of the teachers, Lucas Graciano, echoed the idea, roughly amounting to the fact that there are many good ways to resolve a drawing issue, but there are many more wrong ones.  In the end the only way to know is to try.  There is no substitute for putting in the time, and no short cut (although finding the right school does seem to act a catapult in the right direction).  Under the expert eye of these instructors, I'm gonna just keep trucking on! 

Quick Re-Cap of my first term at Watts!

It was awesome.  It was extremely hard.   I'm going to need to reread the Brene Brown book... the one about self-compassion.  I was just so grateful to be there I didn't reeealy mind being the worst kid in the class.  The people are wonderful.  I have friend crushes on all the teachers.  I love it.

It was stressful at first, leaving a great job to come down and hustle for day-to-day temporary assignments.  I hate getting calls at 5:30 am, but I am very lucky to have a degree in something as portable as Dental Hygiene.  After about 4 months of sweating it and last minute gigs, I found two great offices and can go to class the rest of the time!  Even managed to squeeze in a couple of commissions.  Barely.

Here is a mini schoolwork art show from a few classes.  I had seven:  Quick Sketch and Gesture Head & Figure painting- Jeff Watts, Animal Painting- Tom Babbey, Facial Expressions- Lucas Graciano, Head Drawing & Figure Drawing- Ben Young, and Costumed Figure Painting- Meadow Gist.  

Animal Class
(from photo reference)

Burnt Umber lay-in

Burnt Umber & White

Last 10 minutes, high lights added by instructor Tom Babbey!

Tom promised me it was okay for me to sign it, he swears he didn't do 'that much'

9x12" oil on canvas 

Many weeks later...

Spring Brochure!

One super uplifting evening I walked into class and a few of my mates stopped me to tease, "You're famous."  I made the next terms 'student gallery' portion of the school brochure!  That did feel good.  I took a few extra home.  This was the first one Tom got me to slow down for.  Some how I managed to stay patient, organized, and conscious.  I also kept the paint thinner so I could sneak up on it.  Then in the last ten minutes Tom came around to me and demonstrated how to lay in the highlights I had saved til the last.

'Red Pony'

In Progress

I surprised myself at how slow and careful I managed to be, when Tom came around at 10pm and asked what I planned to do.  It was then I realized the three hour class was over!

and an insanely lucky instagram share from @worldofartists

9x12" oil on canvas panel

 

Managed to finish it at home & get it up on Etsy!

(now SOLD)

A Few More In Progress

(Haven't managed to get back to complete them.  These are 3 hours in)

8x10"s

Gesture Portrait Sketches

oil 6x8", last one is 8x10"

top 5 are Burnt Umber & White

 

I especially the one on the lower left.  I have a long way to go with getting the 'big sculpt' of form and value.  Even so, these are so fun!  In 40 minutes its mostly an intuitive or expressive exercise.

Gesture Figure

40 min 6x8" oil, Burnt Umber & White

These were the best of the bunch, there is a pretty thick stack in the burn pile.

Costumed Figure Class

9x12" oil on canvas, burnt umber & white

11x14" oil on canvas

Commish!

Franklin

8x8" oil on canvas

I am so happy to be here!

Stay tuned!  

Or even better!  Join me!

If you're lookin for a little instruction, check out the Watts Atelier Online School.  It has an insane amount of awesome content!

New Year New Adventure!

Welcome to Cardiff-by-the-Sea

The obvious post-move question we all ask the Universe: "What the hell did I get myself into?"  After two separate trips to U-haul to upsize the truck, dragging my car behind it all the while, my patience was waning.  And that was before the movers showed up.  The movers:  I selfishly admit I pictured them as huge, young, strong, patient, and kind with a great sense of humor.  Reality hit me in the face as I opened the door. My movers were nice, but more like Blue in Old School. I'm sure their co-workers were back at the moving office planning their retirement party at that very minute, and there was no sign of reinforcements.  They walked through my apartment to assess my bounty and sent me back to U-haul for a 3rd time, and even bigger upgrade.  Even my overly enthusiastic brain was forced to acknowledge this was an official set back. Gulp. This is what I get for thinking I could move mid-week, right before Christmas when friends and family were unavailable.  If my mom hadn't sent cash in her stead, and two dear friends hadn't come by earlier in the week to help me pack, it would have been a true disaster.

My moving fantasy, still intact, pictured us spending a couple of happy, energy-filled, whistling hours loading the the truck, an unadventurous, traffic-barren drive to L.A., arriving during that magical time after rush hour, but before dark.  Instead, my reality involved the old fellas needing repetitive breaks, a surprisingly expensive lunch, and poor judgment.  Against my begging and pleading, they insisted on saving the largest and heaviest pieces till the end. That special moment happened in the dark, down three stories of rickety, old steps.  

Queue my breaking point:  It was after 8 pm, I conceded far more cash than originally estimated as well as defeat.  I knew exactly what I'd given up to pursue this opportunity. I walked away from a great job and amazing friends I've made over the past nine years and had to accept a new long distance version of my relationship.  I called my boyfriend and immediately start to cry.  He delivered the perfect motivational speech, and we laughed together when he finished with "It's not supposed to be easy!"

 I tucked in for one final night in Sacramento on the hardwood floor of my empty apartment, with my cats sliding off my sleeping bag all night.  I woke  before dawn ready to get the hell outta there.  After going through the trash to relocate all the tweaker-bate* items to a safer receptacle**, a few properties down, the good steward Alley Bob slips his number into my pocket so I can confirm my survival at the other end.  I hug him hard despite the fact he has literally just had both hands in the trash.  

He checks my blinkers and sends me off!  I'm F-ing doing it!  The cats are not happy, but desperate wining abates after about an hour and by the time I hit LA, I'm feelin good enough to snap this selfie!  Right, I hit LA at 3 pm on the Friday before the holidays so even though I only have a couple hundo miles to go, this is like the halfway point.  I pause my pod cast, 'Serial,' for a hot second and reschedule the San Diego movers to the next morning, but in just 13 hours, only stopping twice for gas I MAKE IT TO CARDIFF!

*basically Bob empties the entire contents of the bin since tweakers are not carefully looking to extract the recyclables, they are just tweaking, which apparently requires tossing trash all over the parking lot.

**because it’s a dumpster so they cant tip it over.

Check out the rig!

27' truck with car on the dolly!  I now have sweet dolly skills, totally took my car off that thing by myself.  Walked tall.

Check this out, my new roommate, who I just met, had the sweetest house-warming gift for me!  Not only is this a very thoughtful selection, he got Steve Pressfield to sign it!  What a guy!

Notes from Terry's last critique

Terry writes that my self-critiques are right on, and so I am encouraged to keep taking my own advice!  Nice.  He continues, "Your value control is getting better, but you may be responding too much to what you’re seeing in your reference material. You’ll want analyze why Sargent made a value (or color) shift where he did, and strive to describe the form not because Sargent made a value shift, but because the depiction of form demands it."  This eloquently sums up my feelings of frustration when I've got stuck trying to replicate a master's stroke with out understanding it.    

The prescription is to study Asaro's planes of the head.  I suppose the head isn't just in my apartment to keep an eye on the cats while I'm out...time to learn it.  The goal is to learn to superimpose the planes in my mind over the actual head of my subject. 

As for the beer series you may ask?  "Great job!" -Terry Miura.  Enjoying that for a moment.  He sees more love and intention in the treatment of the backgrounds and adds, 

"Remember, rendering something realistically is the easy part. Designing a compelling image is the hard part, and designing requires that you pay attention to all parts of the composition. I like how you played with the strokes, colors, values, edges, opacity, texture. It all looks very much done on purpose, which is what you want."  Now, to bring that to the heads!

Christmas Commission Dog Portraits!

Knowing full well I should have been purging and packing, I took on a couple commissions right after the brewery show and right before Christmas.  That's what you do when you cut your hours to be an artist, go to work!  This was another good test to keep up quality under a bit of pressure.  It also proved to be too much for Tico the cat.  Two of my favorite in-progress pictures capture Tico's own frustrations with attention deficit.

Tico Staging a Sit-In

And Again

 'Dillinger'

8x8" Oil on Canvas

'Dutch'

8x8" Oil on Canvas

Two pairs of buddies!

'Ida'

8x8" Oil on Canvas

'Woody'

8x8" Oil on Canvas

(thought it'd be nice to through in one framed image for the full effect)

I hope everyone's New Years Adventures are off to an exciting start!

Thank you to my very special guest editor Betty Nelson!

'HighBrau' Art at Track 7 Brewing & a Sargent Study!

Whelp, I pulled it off!  Managed to knock out a new bunch of paintings inspired by 'Track 7 Brewing Co., and get them framed and up for a very limited engagement.  It was another amazing turn out of friends!  Thank you for coming out!  Ah, so grateful.   It's nice to know that simply refraining from any sort of social life and cutting back on my hours at the dental office was enough to make it doable!  It is doable!  I got a few more left, so next up, Etsy store.  Hopefully I can sort that out and paint a few more dog portraits (great Christmas present idea!) before I head down to study at Watts Atelier in January.

I managed to squeeze in one master study after skipping out on my Terry homework last week during the beer show crunch.

This master study of John Singer Sargent kept me up late.  I had a difficult time interpreting that stroke of light along the left, inside part of her nose.  I reshaped it a few times, but it still gives me away.  I heard Jeff Watts say in a demo DVD, "You can't communicate what you don't know."  Sargent clearly knows his anatomy better than I!  Terry would agree, time for an anatomy book.   The light side of the nose above her left nostril abuts the top, red plane to sharply, there needs to be a mid tone with some softer edges to describe the side plane.  The forehead does catch the most light, but doesn't turn well over the brow ridge vertically.  I do think her left cheek turns to the side plan pretty well.  There is a little improvement in carving the eye sockets, but they still don't seem to house eye 'balls'.  Terry addressed the need for equal intent in every stroke with my previously posted bottle cap painting.  He reminded me to note where they begin and end whether they are in the focal point or the background.  Here, there are a lot of fussy little strokes around the head, but I just had to tuck in for class!  Thats what I get for doing it the night before...  I do like her chin!  Her mouth isn't bad, but her muzzle does not turn to her left.

Beer Paintings!

'Afternoon Delight'

10x10" oil on canvas

$300

SOLD

(if you look close you can see the T and the B of Track 7 Brewing in the growlette)

'Saved Ya a Seat'

6x6" oil on canvas

$175

SOLD

'Mini Keg Mega Fun'

10x10" oil on canvas

(in a silver frame, not yellow as it photographed here)

SOLD

'Short Stack'

6x6" oil on canvas

$175

SOLD

'Starting Line Up'

8x8" oil on canvas

SOLD

'Three for Thursday'

6x6" oil on canvas

'Time Out'

6x8" oil on canvas

$200

Donated to Funds for the Fallen Heroes

and raffled off to benefit those families of the Sacramento police officers

& Angie Blaikie the happy winner!

'Shoulda Been Here Yesterday'

9x12" oil on canvas

Available

'Growlette'

10x10" oil on canvas

$350

SOLD

These beer paintings could similarly benefit from more thoughtful intent in all the strokes.  In 'Starting Lineup,' I left the toned canvas exposed in the foreground, and now finding myself wondering if it distracts from the whole.  I wonder what it would have looked like if I finished it off?  In 'Time Out' only true beer lovers recognized the coaster, which may be mistaken for a craft single.  I used a bent coaster for a prop because I liked its character, but I worry that it didn't read for everyone.  I would also like to work on edges.  These bottles are so sharp, and they would be stronger with a more obvious focal point.  I also want to work on depth, or achieving atmosphere in the backgrounds- some of which here are flatter than others.  

The Next Great Idea!

I am so excited!  I started Terry's class in October, and it is awesome!  That also means I am working fewer days at the dental office, and the better balance just feels good.  I am so grateful to literally be IN class.  The 'independent study'?  Ya, I have basically failed.  I love Terry's class, but it is only one morning a week, and I have ALOT to learn.  So I have an idea:  Watts Atelier. 

Jeffrey Watts is an incredible artist in Encinitas, CA with an equally impressive art school offering several classes a day (also has online classes!).  When he returned my call in person I flipped out, and decided it is time to REALLY do this.  

In a couple months, this blog may really start cooking!  In the mean time a Brewery Show, figure drawing class with Terry, and more master studies to come.

Self Crit

Sorolla Study #21, Clotilde Seated

Because the stroke is too red, her left jaw plane seems to turn to harshly.  The reflected light just behind this seems too light... or, perhaps the outline behind that is too dark?  The edges of the strokes are also too hard, so rather than the jaw rounding back it looks first like a harsh protrusion, and then sunken-in behind.  Her left cheek has a much better turn posteriorly around the cheek bone.  Overall, far too many of the edges are too hard or not mindfully applied.  The strokes do not flow in and out of each other, rather, they look deconstructed.

It still lacks the big sculpt.  I got caught up in what Sorolla's strokes look like versus what the form is doing and I didn't achieve a believable head.  The forehead is flat and lacks an appreciable brow ridge.  The plane of her nose appears too hard a turn from front to side.  The bridge actually looks concave as if she had an old 'softball catching' injury; softer edges would have helped here.  The white strokes under her cheeks, along her nostrils are too light in value, as is the white stroke at the corner of her mouth.  From looking at this, I cannot tell where the light source comes from (big sculpt fail).

Eye balls:  Her right is not as bad as her left.  I still need to work on wrapping the lid around the ball, and forming a socket.

Paintings done in the spirit of my upcoming show at Track Seven Brewing Co. for one day only!

2nd Saturday, November 8th 

noon-9pm

Growlette

10x10"

oil on canvas

I think I got a little seduced by little mongoose brushes when I got into the growlette's shadow shape.  As a result, there are more busy stokes and volume of paint then were probably necessary.  I see why Terry keeps us to bristle brushes in class. The background looked a bit dingier once this painting dried, and I am really hoping with good light and a little liquin it will brighten up a bit.  I want to work on keeping the paint thinner longer allowing more canvas to exposed, in attempt to achieve better depth or atmosphere.  And to free myself up for opportunities that get lost when I saturate the surface with too much paint too quickly.

Short Stack

6x6"

oil on canvas

I really like this one!  It feels fresh because there are fewer passes of the brush, and I like the look of a bit of detailed rendering juxtaposed with some bigger brush strokes.  The background gets a little busy around the bottle caps, those additional strokes may not have been necessary.

If you are in the neighborhood and have never been to Track 7, swing by November 8th!  It has great craft beer, good energy, and will have my art in the back!

Dogs welcome too!

Experimental Error

Anyone take Gen Chem?  No doubt you'll agree the best thing about Chemistry 101 is "experimental error."  It's in the top 5 of all-time greatest "outs."  Completely botch an experiment?  No problem!  Compile your worthless data, explain your bonehead moves in a neatly organized scientific report, and you will not be punished.  At least not until organic chemistry when, suddenly, the product matters.

Well this is not O Chem!  And I have some explaining to do on my latest round.  But first, the results are in from my previous studies.  (Unfortunately, I had already completed my next ones…)

Results

The highlight of this round of critique, "You're clearly able to understand what I have to say, and already know what I'm going to say."  Heck yes, Terry is happy!  Luckily he thought of just a few more things to add:

Juliana:  We agree she was the warm up.  Again my darks are too dark and too cool.  "Remember, black is not something you read automatically when you need a dark.  Black is something you reach when you need a muted blue."  Also, I need to render the eye as a ball with a value change on either side of the iris and with the turning of the eyelids as well.  This next comment hits deep, because it was a fail on my most recent study below too!  When lids are lit in an otherwise dark eye socket, they must be "darker than the surrounding lit areas to compensate for the optical value-shifts due to the dark surrounding the island of light."  Like 'tree holes' for you plein air painters.  

Sorolla's Selfie:  Solid big sculpt!  And nice value and saturation control on the greenish tint of his near cheek!  I ought to slow down and vary the pressure of the brush.  Additionally, the strokes that end in white canvas need to get some love even when they seem unimportant.  

Elena:  The sharp edges of her hair do "give it that old spanish painting look.  It might have worked better had you established more of a hard-edged context.  But I have to say, it does look intentional rather than negligent, so that's good."  I'll take it!  "Decisive and not-timid doesn't mean fast or necessarily thick, though.  It's all in the intention behind each stroked and whether you were able to communicate those intentions."  Which brings us back to the need to vary the strokes.  

Latest

Last Saturday I went in cold to a 4-hour open studio session.  I think I have been spoiled by my silent references in my quiet home.   I quite forgot what could come up with a living model.  Failing to bring my headphones cost me on this one.  I lost patience before hour 3 and rushed to cover the canvas and beat it out of there.  Not a great move, and not one I can properly blame the model for either.

  

in progress...

11x14" sketch from life

Well it had potential, but the thoughtless strokes are so hard to ignore.  Speaking of eyes, her right one has some rounds to it, but her left is flat.  The light catching her left lid does not account for the surrounding darkness and is too light.  I remember trying to keep the background more translucent, but I wonder how it would look if I had ignored what was actually up there and went high key.  As it is, the turp dripping down her right side is not effective; I should have gone back into that and given it some translucent love.  I have a few "candidates" for inappropriately dark stroke awards: the outline of her wrap defending bellow her right ear, the dark at the end of the shadow cast by her neck, the corners of her mouth, the shadow cast from the wrap along the left side of her head, the one bellow her lip defining the top of her 'pout pouch' and the one under her chin.

The strokes making up her shoulder were desperate and thoughtless.  The edge of her right cheek is too hard.  Though the right side of her forehead turns a bit, the left side is a fail.  The corner between the highlight and the darker temporal plane is missing along with any transition.  Variance in brush stroke pressure is not great either.

I had to try and redeem myself the next day, so in the quiet comfort of my 'studio' I did one more. 

Study of Sorolla's Clotilde con traje de noche

The timer was set for this.  I gave myself an hour.  Then in the spirit of this year's World Cup, I added an additional 20 minute overtime period.

I like this one much better.

I had a really difficult time with the right brow ridge catching last light as it turns to the dark side.  I repainted it six or seven times and I'm still not thrilled.  Perhaps it's that the eyebrow finishes too high off to her right, and that I was missing an intentional looking half tone to soften that edge.  The part that bugs me the most is the light stretch of her jaw line against the dark of her left cheek.  This passage is too dark above, too light below, and too cool as well.  That area would have looked much better and subordinate with softer edges and proper value.  A missed opportunity!

Her upper lip looks too big, or too low.  Her eye needs to be more spherical too.  Hmm no maybe that bugs me more.  I wonder if eyeball practice is coming next?

"Never Gets Easy, Does It?"

"Never gets easy, does it?" was exactly what I needed to hear, from Terry.  It's nearly impossible to imagine this is hard for Terry, or Sorolla!  That really is the point I need to soak up; it will always be hard.  As the manager of the World Series runner-up Rockford Peaches once declared, "It's the hard that makes it great."  Good, I am right where I am supposed to be.

Results Show!
(As always brought to you in a retelling of Terry Miura's latest notes on my prior posted studies)
I haven't re-posted the previous studies in the past, but I will today so the comments are more useful.

As for the Dogs, high five!

He thought they looked great.  In future pet portraits I need to more carefully consider the role of the background.  I need to ask myself just how much of the background is important in providing context for the dog's position in the environment, being careful not to over-describe.


As for the President Elect in 1909, there are a few more suggestions.

Mr. Taft's saturation was mostly under control except for the red streak on his right cheek.  The study had good vertical value change without being overworked.  However, in an interior tonal painting the darks of a dark background need to be transparent in order for it to recede.  (One can see the transparent dark under his lit ear looks better than the other opaque side).  To accomplish this, a bigger brush would be useful.  The black outlining his mustache was a drawing relic that should have found itself painted over, as it flattens the shape of his facial hair.

Finally, he appreciated the attention paid to the variances of soft edges, but calls me out for not using a loaded brush.  The strokes where the outside edges meet the background look timid because the paint is too thin.  He in includes the perfect Sargent recommendation for this, "Paint one shape into another."  Terry explains it requires a "confident, intentional, loaded brush" to "achieve buttery soft edges" then adds, "Don't expect to get it right on the first try".  This is the error I make when I'm getting tired, ignoring that my palate needs cleaning, and carelessly grabbing a little from whatever piles happen to cover the glass.  This is a desperation move like taking a lazy shortcut which ends up costing double.  The fix for my timid strokes must be addressed on my palate first, and then I can move on with light pressure and intentional direction of the brush.  When this fails, there is always the trusty 'undo button' (the palate knife) for a scrape and round two.




The latest studies!

Study of Sorolla's Juliana
1 hour

Self Crit

That shadow mass does not read as a mass.   It has too much variation of value and temperature including the reflected light by her left eye, which is too light.  Her hair knows what I am talking about.  The brown outline tracing her jaw from her left ear is too dark, too brown, and too hard of an edge.  Should have gone for the knife.  The dark line on the inside corner of her left eye is also too dark and cool, unless she was recently wounded.  I am not feeling the 'big sculpt'.  Perhaps we can call this a warm up?

I spent more time on the next…

Study of a 1909 Sorolla Selfie

1.5 hours

I was feeling like a failure at the end of this, but looking at it now, I like it!  I was really trying to keep the background translucent, and then I contaminated my stroke with opaque flesh to his right.  Like Mr. Bean I tried to blend it in to cover my tracks, which worked about as good as any Mr. Bean cover up.  It was too late, and very difficult to scrape it off the paper.  I see another miss hit in his nose highlight.  With the white too large and too far south I have flattened what ought to feel like the ball of his nose.  The reflected light in the shadows of his forehead and cheek may be too light.  Although I loved laying in that stroke which is meant to be his side burn, it more closely resembles a strap keeping his hat from becoming the victim of a blustery gust.  The facial hair here seems to turn the form better than some have in the past.  I used much more medium (liquin) for this one and I think it really helped.  

And even longer on the last…

These two have caught on to the 20 min mandatory breaks.  They're pretty sure it's about them.

Study of Sorolla's Elena

~ time?  Really not sure 2-2.5 hours until USA game time

First thing I did this morning was clean my turp (technically odorless mineral spirits) and top it off.  It was trashed with pigment!  Oops, so refreshing to start this one though.  I'm going to call a drawing error.  No, I swear her mouth was NEARLY that small in the original, but her eyes were not that far apart.  Or maybe, it's that I lost the cool and darkness of the stroke that is meant to define the inside corner of her right glabellum as it turns down into her nose, in reworking it.  Actually, I think it's that her eye doesn't recede in the socket as a result.  Let's go with that for now.  

I tried to pay close attention to the soft edges along the right of her jaw.  Just above these I really liked the graphic light contrast as her fair face met black hair, and couldn't bring myself to soften them.  Painting them hard edged seemed cool at the time.  Now it seems like cheating.  I also regret redrawing the right of her chin with that broad stroke.  The outline is too thick to turn the form.  

I hadn't painted in a while when I started with that first study.  It really helped to paint the other two back to back!  So glad I see progress in this set.



NEWS!

This week I made a big decision!  In order to make more of a go at this, I asked my manager to cut back my schedule next year.  This is my idea of a taking risk, a little plunge.  I am so excited!  And a little scared.

Thanks for coming!