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One. One hundred, really. One Hundred Heads. I counted backward in order to have a blast off effect when I arrived to this place. 3,2,1…
I did it, it took two years longer than planned, but I arrived at one hundred heads. I looked back at my first post of the 100 Heads project and was surprised to rediscover that I started it in conjunction with opening my occupational therapy private practice, Arise Therapeutics. I wanted the two to grow together and this is part of what I wrote then,
I've always been uncomfortable with drawing faces, they never seem to come out quite right. Drawings from my art school years are filled with faceless torsos. Back then, it seemed there would be time later to get to all the things I didn't understand. Now that later is now, it's time to come face to face with faces. My 40's seem to be a time of delving into all that is uncomfortable, in order to see what is really there...
…for so long, the things I love to do have lived like decorations on my life, attended to in spare time, while work has been a stressful chore that takes up the majority of my days. Can watering the seed of what you love crack the concrete? Is it really possible to close that gap? What might happen by facing the uncomfortable?
It turns out that watering the seed of what you love can crack the concrete. I found this out one person at a time. And what happens by facing the uncomfortable? One baby step at a time, you arrive to truly become the person you have always been.
I'm not only no longer afraid of drawing faces, I now enjoy it. How do I make a nose look like it's coming out? Or eyes like they're set in? It turns out that curiosity trumps fear. For so many years I convinced myself that those faceless torsos showed a depth, a mystery, but inside I knew I just didn't know how to draw them. I now see that depth comes from going into the unknown and uncomfortable and letting it look like what it looks like. It comes from delving rather than avoiding.
When I graduated from OT school and was overwhelmed with the fear and trepidation of being a new therapist one of my instructors told me that my OT license didn't mean I knew it all, it meant I could begin."You now have a license to begin," she told me, and that's what I feel when I look at this final portrait, that I have arrived at the beginning. The fear of getting into the ocean has shifted to the surrender of riding the wave.
Speaking of new beginnings, I will be leaving my quiet corner of Blogger, this place that raised and served me so well. My blog can now be found at my new art website, annewoodsart.com
Later is Now.
It was during this painting that something started to…happen. I started to see and respond in terms of painting not drawing. I could feel myself carve rather than render and in that the painting started coming to life. I like how she looks both dimensional and comfortable at once.
Sometimes I wonder why on earth I've taken up this not-at-all-easy task of learning to oil paint. It was during this painting that I realized it's the interplay of science and art that intrigues me, how it's the union of both that is needed to capture beauty. Science and art, light and shadow, Heaven and Earth. It's the union of opposites that makes things whole.
I'm so eager to attend the next life drawing session and build on some of these breakthroughs but I leave tomorrow morning for my final 10 day yoga therapy training in Calgary. And really, it's all the same subject, whether I'm painting someone or helping them heal, it's all about whole-making.
I finally made it made it back to life drawing! So much unexpected upheaval in the last two months kept me away, upheaval that resulted in some unexpected gifts like my first real art studio and the growth of my OT/yoga therapy business.
This is Laurence, one of my favorite models in town, painted during a 3 hour session. I am very slowly/hesitantly/eagerly delving into the temperature and value thing. Although I haven't painted at all since the workshop two months ago I can see progress in my understanding here.
Laurence will be taking this pose again and I look forward to refining this painting further. I've haven't had the opportunity yet to work on a painting of a model for more than one session. I waver between the feeling that I could make it better or screw it up, reminding myself that in order to create I must be willing to destroy.
It's been too long since I lasted posted. My business is growing in exciting and unexpected ways and I've been working to accommodate both its growth as well as the time I would like to have as an artist. I took an incredible class at the Scottsdale Artist's School with Sherrie McGraw, David Leffel, and Jaqueline Kamin two weeks ago. I'm so thankful for their brilliance as instructors and their generosity in sharing their knowledge. This is my second ever attempt to paint a figure in oil.
I loved being able to paint from 9-5 each day. We were all joking about how frustrating and exhausting learning to oil paint is and how your brain starts to lose it's battle by about day 3. One student said "You forget who you are and who you owe money to." It's then that the magic happens and you shift from seeing according to your familiar habits and perceptions to seeing what is truly right in front of you.
We finally had a male model at life drawing this week! He had a beard and bald head with long strands of hair. He struck awesome Renaissance style poses. This is a 10 minute sketch. I love the way it turned out and shows how less is more.
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.
Wednesday night life drawing started back up again this week after a summer hiatus. It was ultimately good to be back though it felt like trying to convince myself to jump into ice cold water to get myself to go. We were all in the same boat, feeling rusty, frustrated, and relieved to be drawing again all at once. I've often wondered why I so resist doing the things I say I love to do. As we call ourselves forth and our light gets brighter it also casts a shadow. It helps to know that resistance is just part of the whole, not something to beat down and overcome, but to be aware of and move with.
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.
