Workshop Day 3 – Another reason to hate cellophane

Another day of the Cheifetz workshop, another day of undiscovered challenges. David started a new composition today, which meant all of his students did, too. One of his most popular, albeit relatively new still life twists, is the use of cellophane. Yes, cellophane, that awful plastic wrap that’s supposed to be used to seal open containers, but all it really does is seal itself around your hands as you try frantically to attach it to your leftovers bound for the refrigerator. Well, as if there weren’t enough reasons to demonize cellophane, David had the bright idea at some point last year to try and paint objects wrapped in the stuff. What’s more curious is that many of the students wanted his second composition to be this subject matter. He’d never done a live demo of cellophane wrapping technique, but he happily agreed to do it live!

Davids cellophane subject
David’s setup and progress after an hour!

I had originally planned to do a new composition today that consisted of an orange or apple hanging precariously off an edge to get that 3D depth effect, but opted to embrace the opportunity to try something genuinely impossible like cellophane wrapped objects. What the hell, right? After all, how many times do you get the chance to see a master like David Cheifetz do a really hard composition like this live, then have a couple of days to try imitating the same thing… with him walking around the room and available to give hands-on assistance! I know I won’t get this right, but I will learn a lot trying and one day when I can do it, I will look back at this effort and chuckle. So here’s to laughing at me and my first cellophane wrapped still-life attempt. Here goes nothing…

Red Vase setupRed Vase - Day 1

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Workshop Day 2 – knives aren’t just for cooking, slicing, and stabbing!

Another great day at the workshop. We did a lot more painting today, but things started off with an hour of David doing a demo. He picked up where he had left his painting off from yesterday. Very interesting as he demonstrated more technique and color strategies for the support cast of objects. I learned another volume of painting secrets, well secret to me at least, and was able to apply many things immediately to my painting later in the day. Watching David create one of his signature compositions before my very eyes was worth the price of the workshop alone.

David doing a demo to start off day 2.

We spent more time working on our paintings today than the first day. I spent a lot of time working slowly and carefully with the painting knife, never picked up a brush today. After 5 hours of painting I started to get much more comfortable with the painting knife, getting a feel for how to manipulate the paint on the surface of the board, as well as gaining more comfort in knowing where the paint was on the knife and where it needed to be on the knife for tricky angles.

David continued to work the room constantly during our workshop today. I spent numerous sessions of 1on1 time with him as we worked through some of the challenges in my painting, of which there are many. He told me that I was tackling a very difficult subject on many fronts – the water pitcher is hard to do b/c it’s reflective, has a wide range of values, the shape is tricky, and the coloring is far from straightforward. No better time to dance out of my comfort range and skill level. Needless to say, David was willing to demonstrate solutions to me directly on my painting.

David Helping

The lighting in the studio is great for our painting work, but it’s awful for taking pictures of the work. I’ve posted my progress below, but will try to get a better shot tomorrow with some decent lighting. It has a long way to go, but I’ve already learned so much that it’s hard to believe it’s only been 2 days.

Progress and Layout Progress 1

Day 3 we shift gears to a new composition, so I’ll have to finish my first knife painting back home later this month.

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Workshop Day 1

I’m attending a 4 day workshop taught by David Cheifetz in Lindale, TX. Learned a ton on the first day alone, especially regarding what makes up a great still life composition and how to set it up. I always knew David was a great artist, but he’s also a very engaged, effective instructor, too.

Each student has their own still life setup, but you get to learn so much from his discussions with the other students, some of whom are professional artists! More on that in a later post. My first composition gave me some challenges with getting the ellipse shape of the tea cup just right, so I spent a lot of time working through that challenge. Got started painting with just a short time remaining, so no photo of work in progress yet.

David did a couple of demos to illustrate his knife painting technique and explain the details of his composition. Before I knew it I had a long page of notes. Awesome!

Gotta run to day 2. Couple of quick photos from day 1.

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Class in session at studio

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My first composition layout. Focal point is the blue water pitcher.

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Giverny Update

Spent a few more hours on the sea of green. Since the last post, I’ve worked on the back of the landscape, working in more dark tones to get things pushed backwards. But the bulk of time was spent on the large grouping of ferns on the left bank, and the bright pink flowers that are the focal point. Also added some life to the darkest part of the stream and the long grass hanging over it.

Prior to these past two sessions, I spent a little time experimenting with color mixing to get a wide array of greens. Greens are tricky, in my opinion, because there are so many subtle differences, even in the most innocuous of landscapes. It’s also takes some time to control the saturation values properly so the tone of the entire composition is consistent, which seems harder to do with a natural landscape full of green plants.

Next up is the stream, which is really out of whack in the current state, but I don’t think it will take a lot to get it firmed up.

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New Project: Giverny – La deuxième fois

Taking on a new, larger project based on another very green Giverny photo. The good news is that I took it in person, which means I was at the stunning Giverny gardens with my beautiful wife – pretty ideal to say the least. The bad news is all that intimidating green.

Reference photo is pretty good, and it’s readily apparent how one can be lead into the photo.

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I spent the better part of an hour tonight doing nothing but experimenting with mixing variations of greens, mostly using Permanent Green Light and Viridian Green, and testing how they change with the addition of various secondary colors – burnt siena, cad red, cad yellow light and medium, cad orange, and ultramarine blue. Staying away from pthalo green for now, but I’m happy with what the results are.

A couple weeks ago I got this painting started. After a quick reference drawing in my sketch book, I laid in very remedial base layers, emphasizing darks. This looks like total crap for now, but that was expected as the next session will build more value range and better greens to give it some life.

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Canvas size is 24×18″, which is large for me. I’ve done this size a couple times before, but very basic stuff, so this will be different. I may also try to do some large chunks of this with a palette knife instead of a brush. I have a workshop in February with David Cheifetz and my experience with painting with a knife is very limited. Fingers crossed!

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“Play with Me?” – done… really

A few posts ago I had declared a drawing of one of my dogs completed, but was drawn back in. I didn’t like the floating head look and wanted to fix that problem. With some guidance from my drawing teacher (thanks again Laurie!), I got to the finish line with a drawing that I’m proud to hang on the wall.

Some significant enhancements: 1) added the wood floor, 2) a plain rug, 3) darkened some of the darkest areas of her face with an ebony pencil, and lastly 4) added a light cast shadow.

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Lines and Blossoms – Finished!

Overdue for this post, given that I finished this one a few weeks past, but better late than never. The final “touches” took more time than I thought, but it was important to get the depth of the tree right, which took some long steps out of my comfort zone with a very high value white to represent the bursting blossoms in bloom. It was a bright day, so the photo looked washed out and a little flat, so I went with my gut on what would work on the pseudo shady side (left side). Probably could have gone a little darker to add the right value contrasts, but at some point you have to say “done”!

In addition to the density and value range updates for the cherry blossom, I added more focus to the windows directly above the main doorway. Notice the curtains in their various states of being drawn up or back.

Having taken time to consider the finished painting for the past month, I’m happy with the technical variation and palette. However, as a composition I think it’s lacking. I tried to draw the viewer into the painting in a few ways: 1) the shape of the tree on left side curled around the entrance to the 2) main doorway with the stairs leading light steps up into the darkness, and 3) with more crisp details in the windows immediately around the top of the tree. There’s also some good compositional layout with the various angles of the building lines. That said, I don’t feel that the painting does enough to engage the viewer. I’d be interested to know what others think, so please offer up your criticisms, comments, guidance.

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Drawing – Dog Curled on Bed

With a close-up of a dog face under my belt, it was time to tackle a different perspective. This is my mom’s dog, Dixie, in full dream mode. She’s very camera shy, so this is as good as reference photos get for her.

 

First session lasted a couple of hours, but only after having done an initial reference sketch, which helped get the difficult curled up shape and proportions of body parts just so. Once I had this much done I had to give my arm a break. All those hairs start to drive you nuts. Pretty good start, but a little creepy since she’s floating on the page. Dixie Drawing Lg Another session, probably 90 minutes, got the obvious dog bed in place, but also worked the ebony pencil to get the values right on the folds of Dixie’s coat. Dixie Drawing Finished

Pretty happy with the final composition. I’m genuinely surprised at how quickly this came together. There were 3 big challenges with this drawing.

1. The face and general complexity of dog parts involved in a curled canine. But the reference photo was really washed out for the face, so I had to draw what I knew was there rather than just what I saw, b/c I knew what I was looking at was wrong.

2. The hair is much different compared to my previous effort with Zip’s dog face. The strokes are longer and thinner. It was also very tricky to get the white dotted pattern and random splotches in some places just right. Used a 2B for most of the hairs, but in some spots experimented with an HB.

3. The values on a curled up dog SUCK! I’d love to blame it on the lighting in the photo, but even if the lighting was studio quality, I’m pretty sure the challenge of gradating values to show the change in depth in the curled center area would be the same. But I got it to a good point and decided I better leave it alone.

Overall very happy with this one. I’ll have to do a similar composition of my dogs curled on their beds.

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San Francisco and Golden Gate Diptych

Long overdue for a post. Been working a lot on drawings (animals), finishing the Lines & Blossoms piece, and started this new diptych.

Reference photo was taken by me a couple years ago. It’s an amazing vantage point from the Marin headlands looking back towards the city. Breathtaking!

SF and Golden Gate reference photo
SF and Golden Gate reference photo

This is my first true diptych, as well as my first painting on wood. The panels are small (5″x7″) and pre-treated. Below is the rough drawing outline, which I had practiced in my sketch book a couple times prior. What worked best for me, which wasn’t the way I first tried to do it, was to draw from the horizon/back of the composition “forward” to the bridge and foreground. It was much, much easier to get the angle and proportion of the GG bridge with the city roughed into the background for reference points.

rough drawing to get scale on panels
rough drawing to get scale on panels

This first session was short by my standards, perhaps a couple of hours. It moved quickly because of the small size and the color mixes came together faster than usual. The details will come in the next session, but I think getting the lighting on the cityscape is going to be tricky but critical to ensure the piece has the right depth.

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Drawing – Vine Tomatoes Part 1

So at first, I was intimidated, and a little concerned that I had angered my drawing teacher, Laurie, because she recently told me to draw this…

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What the hell! Tomatoes, lots of them, with the vines attached. As the sweat began to bead on my forehead, she showed me in her Mr Miyagi way that to draw a a batch of vine wrapped tomatoes, I simply had to combine all my past lessons of what seemed like an endless array of geometric shapes – spheres, cones, cylinders – into one drawing. I guess she was right because in short order I came up with this…

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I’m pleasantly surprised with the results and actually look forward to working in the rest of the tomatoes, well, most of them. Whoda thunk that drawing fruit could be so fun.

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