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This is an oil painting sketch made during a 3 hour life drawing session on Sunday. At the time I thought it was just awful but a few days later I think it is not so bad. I certainly learned a lot from doing it. One of the things I learned is how hard it is to paint with oils! I struggle with how to mix the colors, they're unpredictable and I need to take some time to learn what it is they do when you put them together. I find the combination between seeing value AND color AND knowing how to capture it in oil paint to be dizzying. As my comfort with drawing faces increases I can feel my next project being born. I will learn how to oil paint. I look forward to the value/color studies, the little painted objects and portraits to come.
The intense dry heat of June in New Mexico brought longing for June in Maine this morning. I ache for Earl Grey tea in the fog on the deck of the Inn on the Harbor in Stonington. My longing brought me to visit this post. How amazing to be able to visit moments of your very own life when you're longing for what you want. I was surprised by what I wrote there about movement, "It is only movement that closes the gap. Ugly, awkward, lovely movement." I was talking about the gap between idea and form at the time, be it the written word or an image on a page.
It was before I started or even knew about the yoga therapy program or really thought much about movement at all. Now I have 85 faces drawn or painted after avoiding them for most of my life. Who knew that the daring that morning of drawing the harbor when I hadn't drawn anything for so long and the fear of not being any good yet moving anyway would bring me here? I guess I did, somehow.
This model is wearing just the right outfit for the 95 degree heat.
This pose had the extra challenge of how to capture a face when it's mostly hidden by hair. It felt good to get back to Wednesday night life drawing again.
This was done during a 3 hour life drawing session on Sunday afternoon. This is my second portrait painted in oils and I'm excited about the potential. What floors me is that the shift in my ability to paint hasn't come from practicing painting, it came as a result of the yoga therapy I'm learning, doing, and teaching. In movement, when the parts of the body move congruently the result is better stability and balance. It's amazing to see how this shift in the way I move and see has translated to painting, because I haven't been painting.
I head to Calgary on Monday to complete my final week of training to become a Certified Yoga Therapist. I've written 104 case studies and drawn 82 heads so far. I love seeing how these two worlds are pulling closer together, one informing the other. I love seeing how going into the discomfort of the unknown and difficult has resulted in something less of a day dream and more of a reality.
This is the final portrait, it took 2 days to paint. I've never painted a portrait in oils before so I'm overall happy with this first try. When I saw that Studio Incamminati was coming I just signed up for the class, I didn't think about it being a portrait class until I showed up the first day. In the past I would have thought I should master still lives in oil before trying portraits. I realized it was my 100 heads project here that made me forget to be afraid of drawing faces. Thank you Studio Incamminati, you were an oasis in the desert and brought me back to life.
On the 4th day we put all we learned from the exercises of the first 3 days (grisaille and color studies) together to create a portrait. Funny how when I put all those pieces together it felt like everything started falling apart. This the first layer of the final portrait by the end of the day. It's the stage that makes me thankful I have a day job! I don't have a lot of experience with oil paint and it got heavy and sticky and frustrating but I also totally loved it.
