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I painted this in a 2.5 hour life drawing session. My focus was on capturing the light and painting with paint which means using mass and brush strokes rather than drawing with paint. It's a huge shift in both seeing and doing. Less is More! It's so easy to get caught up in drawing unnecessary details which is the death of a painting. Every time I lost my way and defaulted to rendering I took it as a cue calling "Come back to the Light!"
I made it back to life drawing last night, it was the first chance I've had to attend to my artistic life since the Taos workshop. The model had amazing pre-Raphaelite hair and when she turned her in head in this pose I jumped at the chance to draw a portrait. The language of drawing is different than the language of painting so it was an adjustment to be working with line again.
What is common in both, and also in yoga therapy and craniosacral is that Less is More. It's a universal principle. When we force we lose touch with the essence of our subject, we push our will onto it rather than give space to let it "what is" emerge. Sherrie pointed out that what people commonly see is optical illusion and it's up to the artist to point out the truth. I saw that when drawing both the lips and the outside edges of the eyebrows. They looked darker at first but when I actually followed the light they were not as dark as I originally thought. When I backed off from what my mind thought was true and became quieter and drew less the true essence of the model was able to emerge.
I like to take photos of paintings in progress to see the various stages and also capture where I might have veered off course. This was actually my first portrait of the Taos workshop and while I wasn't ultimately happy with the final outcome I like where it is in this stage. This is where I first learned to push paint, rather than draw with it, and to use the model as a reference rather than just copying what I see.
This sketch reflects so many ahas and influences from the Taos workshop. It's where I learned that painting is like poetry, don't copy what you see, show how light spills over your subject like a waterfall. Show what caught your eye, what you think is beautiful, what made you fall in love. You should have seen the way the light fell on her face, her chest, and down her arm, like this, like this, like this...
When this dancer became too dark and dull I was shown how to push the shadows, brighten them, in order to get more of a sense of light. That was so different than how I normally dealt with shadow. And when I struggled with the lips as I always do Sherrie showed me, in just three strokes, how lips are a temperature change not a value change. Another optical illusion between what we think we see and what is real.
I realized in posting this sketch how my 100 Heads project has come full circle. I started not knowing how to draw a face and wanting to learn so I copied some of my favorite drawings by Sherrie McGraw. I never knew then that I would end up taking a workshop with her where she would dab the lips onto my own painting.
I spent this morning scrolling through my blog with the intention of collecting some of my favorite images in order to start an artist's Facebook page. I ended up in tears of awe. I made a pot of oolong tea and read for hours and all I could think was Wow. WOW. I have come a long way and have had an amazing life. What a gift to be able to look back at your life this way.
What a gift this blog has been. From the times where I could make art daily to the times where I couldn't -yet could still hear it in the distance, calling me back.
This is a sketch from the last day of the Taos workshop. I could feel myself struggling between getting caught up in rendering, which was familiar, and the new things I'd learned about mass, light, and shadow. With only 15 minutes Ieft I pushed the light and shadow with colors I normally would have thought to be over exaggerated, and that's what brought it back to life.
In this sketch I experimented with hard and soft edges, warm and cool temperature. The cool black of the glove in front brings it forward, the warm black of the other glove makes it go back. Hard edges on the gloves in front, soft edges on the face that's further back.
I recently returned from an oil painting workshop in Taos with Sherrie McGraw and David Leffel. I gave myself the gift of this workshop in honor of completing my year long yoga therapy program and becoming a Certified Yoga Therapist. It's my hope that with 150 case studies done drawing and painting can return again.
Sherrie and David turned everything I've ever learned in the past about painting and drawing on its head. It was so amazing to spend a full week painting from morning to night and be surrounded by others who were passionate about doing the same thing. The lighting for this photo is not good but I decided to post it anyway rather than wait for a time where I could get a better photo, which may well be never. This is the 7th portrait in oils I've ever done. I returned home to clear all the stored clutter from my art studio and rearranged the room entirely in order to catch North light on the easel.
