Greystone Manor

Did these at Greystone Manor in Beverly Hills with Mary Beth. What a cool place to paint.

Persephone Pose - Studio D

I did these 6" x 8" at Studio D at there long pose uninstructed. This one I used the palette from the Venetian Masters Class - alizarin, yellow ochre, burnt umber, ultramarine blue.

These are 7 value studies.

self portrait - grissaille

Added color (their is a shadow in this picture, I need to retake it later). It looks a little more like me I think.

I smoothed out the head a little

Worked on it somemore Wednesday late afternoon. Lifted the nose because I thought filtrum was too small.

Working on the next layer of my self portrait on Tuesday night.

Painting in the Style of the Venetian Masters

I am on class three in an extension class at UCLA called "Painting in the Style of the Venetian Masters" taught by Tom Garner.

Here are some exercises we did last week.

This is a self portrait we started in class today, I will try to get a better photo tomorrow so you can see how it has progressed. There is a yellow ochre scubbled underpainting and then burnt umber layer and then white highlights. I wonder how it is going to turn out.

Ballerina Pose - Get the Lead Out

Did these drawings in tombo markers at the Uninstructed "Get the Lead Out" Pose Session at the Kline Academy. I wouldn't have traditionally chosen these grays for a ballerina pose but I had them in my car.

Value Exercises

I am doing different exercises to work on values. Here the values are changed and shuffled. The top is a photo of the place, the 2nd was painted on site, the third and fourth have the values shuffled. These are twenty minute studies or less. I did this outside at Village Green. It's an hour study.

These are two x hour studies at the Kline Academy themed pose of "Turkish Delights" by the Gallery Girls/

These are some master copies with four values.

Pocahantas - Get the Lead Out

No Cathy Karol Class because of Spring Break so I decided to go to the Kline Academy to practice. My hands and feet are bad and I've started to give up on proportion. I need to rediscpline myself. I've gotten sloppy.

4 value studies

These are my six four value studies. My white and black tend to get muddy. I worked outside and also from some old masters. I can see some of my errors right away now that I see the example and the painting next to each other. There are some misplaced blacks at where the forehead meets the hair line on the Michaelangelo's "Creation of the Sun and the Moon" detail. There are some missing darks behind Perugino's Jesus. and there are some missing darks between the legs of Michaelangelo's "One of the damned dragged to hell by demons." My tree by the lake with the grasses seems to be missing a central dark. My shadow pattern seems to be off in the Cherry tree in the field but I think it didn't look exactly like that when I painted because I went back to take the picture about 20 min after I painted it because I initially forgot to photograph it.

Camels at the Living Desert

I went to "The Living Desert" in Palm Desert on Tuesday to draw some camels which are an important part of my graphic novel. There are no camels in the LA Zoo (they used to have a Bactrian but it died and they haven't replaced it - the empty cage is still there).
Above are the last studies I did where I used pencil and allowed myself to erase. Below art my art pen studies which I did the first couple of hours because I just wanted to be loose.

I'm going to try to go again next week. I just need to figure out some technical things like my basic proportions.

Pen Lesson - Cathy Karol - Santa Monica College

Cathy Karol's class was amazing tonight. We had another pen lesson. She had great hand outs from Huckleberry Fin and from Vincent Van Gogh. I tried to mimic their pen technique but also work within myself.
Linda let me use her new $150 pen for this drawing. Ooo La La

This is my art pen which Joe Weatherly calls "the nail" because he thinks it's harsh compared to the other fountain pens. I still like it.

I was talking to a guy in my class about using pencil under drawings. I said I did this for the first year I used the art pen because I didn't feel confident. Now I feel like I don't need it. I just build up the form and don't worry about it.

Steve Brown - Figures in Motion

Cathy was out this week and Steve Brown subbed for the night. He had us do these incredible exercises. These are the model working slowly across the room.

This are about anticipation/antic, action, result. Three stages of drawing in one. They are supposed to tell the story of any sequence in three drawings.