Mary Blair

Went to the Mary Blair exhibit at the Disney Museum in the Presidio in San Francisco.  It was very inspiring/

A sketch from her trip to Brazil

A self portrait

Song of the South

Song of the South

Peter Pan

Peter Pan

Peter Pan

Peter Pan

Peter Pan

Peter Pan

Alice and Wonderland

The Mad Hatter

Long Pose - Juliete Aristedes Workshop - Is your painting a Band Aid or a Rainbow?

This is the long pose I am working on in Juliette Aristedes' 10 day workshop at BACAA.

Some charcoal studies about how we felt about the pose.  What we thought was beautiful. Juliette says the poster study 1) helps us decided what's beautiful 2) helps us define what we are excited about.

My drawing after the transfer

Transferred on to board.  My outlines are too thick. Sorry. Then umber wash and wipe out.

Color Sketch/Poster Study to try out colors before we put on the real painting.  Juliette said a figure painting can be like a band aid (too monotone) or a rainbow (too colorful)

Juliette says:

For a painting to be successful there has to be a believability to the picture.

The goal of art is not to reproduce nature, it is filtered through a personality.

A painting is a relative series of relationships.

Without a real goal it is hard to get better

Color is not as teachable as drawing

Juliette talked about the POISON CHALICE - in painting you get pushed all the time,  the better you are the bar is always lifted

She mentioned an article in The Golden Age - Chapter 16 waltermorton@gmail.com  Where a bunch of people meet once a week and figure drew but after 4 years didn't get better


TO IMPROVE
- don't rush
- copy good drawings
- look at good work
- have a goal for your work
- concentrate on shapes

Goals can be
- Make something that resonates as beautiful
- Accuracy
- Long Clean Note
- Gestural Line


People She Mentioned
- John Pense
- Pliny the Elder - talked about the painters having too many colors in their palettes
- Apeles
- the Odyssey - didn't have the words for colors we have today
- Neilson Shanks

Historical Palettes
- Juliette looks at portrait paintings where artist holds a palette to figure out historical palettes
- yellow ochre, earth red, black (functions as a blue) with addition sometimes of vermillion, naples yellow and viridian

Painting doesn't need to be perfect, just needs to be believable

10 day workshop with Juliette Aristedes

Today is day four of the ten day workshop I am taking with Juliette Aristedes.  Rash, rash, rashly,  I have spent too much money and runaway to the Bay Area with my drawing buddy Linda to take a ten day workshop at Bay Area Classical Artists Atelier

This is the 3 week post I did at Kline Academy with the help of Brianna Lee before I left.  I was very proud of it and I think it represents a real jump in my painting.

Preliminary sketch to figure out the composition

3 week painting with Brianna

Juliette started out talking about the difference between art and craft basically she said Art is not like napkin folding once you learn a technique you can easily repeat it and make something beautiful.  What makes it art is the unpredicatability of the outcome.

She mentioned Ruskin's thought about the foxglove blossom.

"Impection is in some sort essential to the way we know life.  It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change.  Nothing that lives is, or can be rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent.  The foxglove blossom-a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom--is atype of the life of this world." - John Ruskin

Panting has three components: 1) Drawing 2) Value 3) Color

A goal of painting is self forgetfullness. Think of good painting as AND not Either/Or

Artists Juliette mentioned:
Julian Alden Weir,
Thomsas Coucher
Harold Speed
Whistler
Leonardo da Vinci
Richard Lack
Eugene Carrier (not sure if a spelled correctly)


We did an exercise where we looked at something intensely.  I looked at my hand
- calloused
- gold ring on the finger
- color of coffee with lots of milk or cream
- big M on the palm
- many lines at the joints
- gray at the edge of the finger tip
- short nails
- ink stains
- small amount of dirt under the right index finger nail
- grayness and scarring
- thumb won't straighten
- veins popping out below index and middle finger
- buckling of skin around the knuckles
- ripped skin around the nails
- cracks and crevices
- callouses below ring, middle and pinky finger

Move out of a verbal/tactile way of seeing the world into a visual way of seeing the world.
Painting is like Poetry because it deals in distillation, figure out the essence, trying to get the most emotional content with the fewest words.

I did this pieces at the Thursday night uninstructed session.

I did these pieces the first week of the ten day workshop/