HEAD DRAWING - FA 602

The other studio course I followed this spring is a Fine Arts course: Head Drawing, with the famous William Maughan. I have found mention of his course and his book - "The Artist's Complete Guide to Drawing the Head" throughout the internet, generally with enthusiastic praise - which I can now confirm to be well deserved. As it was the case last semester with the Chiaroscuro course, the principles he teaches are very simple to grasp....and very hard to apply. In essence the key is to concentrate on the shapes of the shadows, their size and relative positions. Forget about features, forget about outlines, just get the shape and size and position of the shadows right and you will get the gender, age, race and likeness of the sitter. The second key learning is edge treatment. Paying a lot of attention to which edges should be hard and which should be soft, which are well defined and which are "lost" to value similarity boosts drawing technique to a totally different level. 

When you have small children, you suddenly notice how many small children are in the world around you. Your surroundings suddenly seem to teem with children, whom you had never noticed before. In the same way, when you finally understand a key concept you see it written everywhere: even in books that you have read already twice without ever noticing it. This happened to me with edge treatment. It is a key concept for analyzing artwork and for creating effective composition and now that I know what is meant with it I find it everywhere.

We used sanguine and white pastel on toned paper for the drawings. Carbothello 645 is the one he recommends: I used Faber Castell 192 at the beginning, but I ended up ordering Carbothello through the internet because it is way softer than Faber Castell. Any middle value paper is ok with this combination - if you want to go darker it takes a darker paper, as mentioned in a previous post. It takes some time to get used to the capped value range (sanguine simply does not go as dark as charcoal!), but the results are really nice and elegant.

This technique is very close to painting, and indeed he carried me through to my first real "painting" experience, using pastels as a medium.  He was also the one to introduce the Sennelier pastels for painting, which have a wonderful soft consistence and are well worth their price. Now that I am using them also for private work I am seriously considering to order a bigger range of colors, although they cost about 5 dollars each in this part of the world - for the moment I am complementing my modest set with NuPastel and Rembrandt pastel. Last but not least he introduced the technique known as "painture a l'essence" - which led me to squeeze my very first oil tubes onto a palette! I cannot say I liked the experience but it was a good way to loose the respect for the oils somehow.

Peinture a l'essence

That is basically the essence of the course...and yet, it has had a tremendous impact on my drawing skills. First of all, my heads now look like the people I am trying to draw: a very satisfying achievement. Second, this technique is actually applicable to any subject with the same effect - you get a drawing that is closer to a painting than to a cartoon. 

DIGITAL FEATURES

I am not proud of this week's results...actually I think they are plain awful. But, as Ira Glass said, this is a normal part of learning and I will not hide it. The brief called for doing a digital painting tutorial of my choice. I chose to do human features according to the wonderful tutorials published by 3D total in their great "Digital Painting Techniques" books. The tutorials I picked are from Anne Pagoda and Nykolai Aleksander, two great digital artists (particularly the latter). Why do I want to do such things? Together with self-imposed assignments I have a number of self-imposed goals. One of them reads something like:

"Thou shall master all media"

It is not that I expect to be able to really master all media but I do want to feel halfway comfortable in all of them. My style (whatever that may be) should be dominated by content not by media. And digital painting is a medium, nothing more, nothing less - and a very powerful one on top. There are actually people out there doing work so awesome with the computer that you feel like you will need three lifes to ever get even close to their level. Check this summary:

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/inspiration/30-deviant-digital-artists-painters-illustrators-worth-to-watch/

So here they are: eyes, mouths, ears and noses - not really like they were intended in the tutorials, I am afraid. I am used to draw with the tablet in Photoshop and that is ok...but painting is another matter altogether. It seems I am nowhere close to understand how the brushes work, there are way too many options to adjust: it feels like you have to change settings every two seconds to get where you want. Towards the end I had the feeling it is almost like learning to use the airbrush (which I have never learnt to use properly, tough I can do decent work) - it is just a matter of coordinating flow, pressure and sweep. Probably not a lot more complex than learning to drive a car or ride a bike....so here is my first fall from that bike. I think there will be many more before I will manage to handle this.

THE PORTABLE MAN

I struggled a lot with this piece and it was incredibly frustrating. It was intended as a first experiment in digital photo-collage, but after three hours of work I realized I would never get where I wanted with the photos I had. While I was thinking when and where to schedule another photo session, I said to myself: I want to be an illustrator, not a photographer - so draw the stupid thing. Up to the initial sketch all went fine, then I had the brilliant idea to experiment with vectors...Ok, I realize it is not impossible to learn how to deal with them, but after the first attempts I estimated this would take the best part of my next five to ten studio slots. I know this is important and I will have to learn it at some point, but maybe that is not what I want to do right now. So I re-rasterized everything and went on from that.

It did not turn out as planned, although I do not dislike it...and I still like the concept, so maybe I will do another version one day. 

The big blank area is intended for lettering - I want to use this as an imaginary book cover for an imaginary book which somebody should bother to write entitled: "Managing Men: A Guide for Women".

The Portable Man - Digital

ETHNIC HEAD STUDIES

The brief for this self-imposed assignment read: "At least four monochromatic studies of ethnic heads (inuit, aborigine, maori, etc..). Dry media on toned paper." I cannot use them for portfolio or anything because I do not own the reference photos, but I hope it will be forgiven if I post them only once here. These studies are A4 sized and very fast to do, about 1h each or less. As soon as I started looking for reference I realized the scope of this training exercise: age, sex, race, expression, characterization....One could go on for a lifetime!

Classical sanguine and white pastel. Raatiraore (on the left) from Tahiti is one of the people interviewed in the fantastic book "Six Billion Others", which I warmly recommend to anyone interested in faces, people or the human race in general. The text below is an extract from his interview.

This are experiments with dark grey and white PanPastel. I liked the result, especially in the rendering of fur, so I did two of them.

   

These two ladies from Haiti did not really fit the brief (I know there is another assignment in the box that would fit them better), but I liked their expression. I do not think they turned out very well, especially because both had a difficult lighting and the color of the paper is wrong. I was taught that with monochromatic drawing on toned paper, the value of the paper should be halfway between your darkest dark and your lightest light. In both of these the paper is too light for the color scheme used.

THE LITTLE BLUE BOAT

I have a little tin box full of self-imposed assignment descriptions - a medicine to keep momentum during the intersession! So there will be a steady trickle of posts of the most interesting ones - in the hope of some critique from the world out there. 

I had a single photo taken with my mobile camera of Nicolas sleeping in the grass on his yellow baby sling. What I liked about it was the high chroma shadows and the effects of transmitted light through the fabric, as well as the warm-cold contrasts. I thought it would make a great case study for transmitted light and chromatic reflected light. The composition also looked potentially interesting.

I made a small thumbnail first to study the value pattern and decide the edge treatment. The whole thing looked somewhat too horizontal, even for a quiet subject as this one, so I made two minuscule abstract studies and decided to make the patches of dabbled sunlight on the grass more diagonal (option 2).

I came to love pastels during the semester, and at the moment it is definitely the medium I know best, so that was the choice. I used Rives BFK paper with NuPastel, Rembrandt Pastel and the wonderfully soft but incredibly expensive Sennelier Pastels. I struggled with the color scheme a lot. I have learned that there cannot be three primaries in the same picture...the reference however looked like it had definitely some blue in the shadows on the left side, which together with the yellow and red of the right side would break the rule. Rules are there to be broken, but maybe not when you are just learning to deal with color! Much analysis later, I decided to experiment with Gurney's gamuts and picked one spanning  a high chroma red, medium chroma green and low chroma purple-red  - there are enough yellows in that one to handle the yellow fabric. Gamuts are devised for mixable media, but well, it is just a guideline. I recokened I could build the cool shadows from the purple red and the greens.So for the process, here is the charcoal underdrawing, fixed and toned (I forgot to take a picture before toning!)

Here is the first "wash" of pastel - a terrible stage when you start wondering wether the picture will work out at all...

And I think it did work out. I am quite happy with the result. The chromatic shadows and transmitted light worked out fine. The hands and folds around the head were intended as the focal point. I managed to defocus the legs and the background, I am not too sure about the bright lit fold on top. I fought with the legs a lot and I think they turned a bit muddy..maybe it was not a good idea to exclude the blues from the palette. There is one blue element, of course - guessed which one? 

The Little Blue Boat
Pastel on paper - 40x60cm (16.5"x25.5")

Pastel in my hands always seem to come out with this rich texture and gaudy brilliance that reminds me of a huge ice-cream cup with tons of smarties, cookies, cream and chocolate sauce. Maybe it is a bit too garish, but well, I will learn to tune it down one day - or maybe not! And did I mention I love drapery?

SUSTAINED FIGURATIVE CONCEPTS – ILL 612

Spring semester is over – it was a tough one indeed! Here a few notes on the courses I have been through this semester. Let’s start with Sustained Figurative Concepts, else known as ILL 612 - I followed the session held by Jeannie Brunnick. The first thing I wondered when I enrolled was: what does “sustained” stand for…my curiosity was soon satisfied. In studio jargon, it seems, “sustained” stands for longer poses of the model, about 3 hours in length. This allows for more refined drawing and also for painting, and stands in contrast with more rapid gestural drawings served by shorter poses. From my point of view, however, “sustained” stood for the amount of work we were required to do. Not only were all figure drawings in full value in pastel, but we had two or three of those per week! Particular attention was given to gesture, proportions and value structure. Our palette was mostly monochromatic red, with some green thrown in for contrast. We started with nudes, alternating males and females, then moved on to the clothed figure. From asian girls in silk kimono to old men in cobold outfit we had them all: magicians, Mexican folk singers, rock stars, civil war soldiers, you name it. I am sure there are rooms at the AAU full of costumes and props designed to torture students: before each session the teacher and model discuss how to make students’ life most difficult with scarves, folds, hats, flowers and whatnot.

We used photographs, as I expected from the online setup, which made things not in the least easier, as photos flatten the values so much: I ended up working with three copies per subject, one normal, one overexposed and one underexposed. I particularly liked the lesson on combining references: pity we did not have an assignment for that one.

I definitely learned a lot, though it feels like the very beginning of mastering figure drawing. I had a tough lesson in value structure, which I am still digesting. And learned to use the pastels for good, which now have a honor standing in my media palette.

Here is a selection of what I believe to be the best drawings,,,,and a collage of all the rest: a pretty impressive number of poses!

Cora on the sofa

One of our Asian ladies

Have to work some more on this one, but it is one of my favorites

Sexy ones...

...tired ones...

A wood spirit?

And all together!

Studying Art Online - Studio Courses

No atelier, no teacher supervising the technical details, no real life models...

How is it possible to study art online???
What do you get for the money and what are you missing? How does it work in practice?

This is how it works
The Academy of Art University has more than 10 years experience in online courses. I believe they are also the only institution to offer a full course of study in art online, with the possibility to obtain a BFA or an MFA without ever setting foot on campus. Studio courses at the AAU are made up of 15 modules per semester. Each module contains a lesson text with examples, media files in the form of videos or powerpoint presentations which may contain real life demos, discussions on techniques, examples of work-in-progress, and a discussion forum with one or more given topics for discussion with fellow students. The material and media are progressively available during the length of the course, starting from the week before each module is due. Once open, they are accessible 24/7. Each discussion forum may be available only for the length of the module, namely one week in normal-length semesters. Each module is associated with one or more exercises or assignments, which have to be completed within the given deadline and submitted as scans or photos to the instructor.

What you get
- Highly professional and extensive feedback from an instructor (at the AAU all professional artists) on your work, with clear indications of the areas you need to concentrate on;
- Text and media are yours to keep for life - online lessons need to be printed out or saved to a text file.
- More or less lively interaction with your fellow students in forums - in online courses they are mostly all involved in a related or unrelated profession in their "real" life and come from every corner of the world, which makes them very interesting people!
- Feedback from fellow students on your assignments - often very enlightening.

What you miss
- No real life models in an atelier setting - I guess each course will have its workaround to that. In still life courses you have to construct your setup yourself (an added plus in learning principles of lighting and composition), for figures you may work mostly from photos. Or very kindly ask friends and family to sit as models - and cope with the fact that they are not professional models. The added plus is that you learn a lot of problem solving and improvisation!
- The whole campus infrastructure is missing. No library, no big studio areas, no professional lighting, etc, etc, etc....You will have to live with what you can afford in terms of space and equipment. A good camera and good lighting are mandatory, though, especially if you have a day job and end up working at night;
- No buzzing exciting campus life - you have to imagine that in your head while sitting in front of the computer at 2 AM after a day of work;
- Networking and contact-making will take some extra work - and, let's face it, never feel the same as real-life contacts;
- All those extra tidbits of information and attitude that you absorb on campus will simply not be there....it can be compensated with some pro-active research work.

And with a bit extra work you may still have:
- Feedback from fellow students on work in progress - you can get this if you manage your time well an can post WIP on assignments a few days before the deadline.
- Off-line discussions with teachers and students. In my experience, instructors react very well and provide tons of information also when contacted outside the frame of the lessons. They are even available to provide feedback on work that is not directly related to class work.

My experience after a semester is that you learn A LOT - just the fact of having to give in an assignment per week and receive feedback on it has a massive impact on the quality of your work. I have seen this for myself and for fellow students as well. It helps also to be guided on a sensible development path, one step following the other. You learn optimal techniques, you learn to manage time and you learn to build your knowledge layer after layer, like a painting taking shape.

Is it good for everybody? No, I personally do not think so. You need a lot of self-discipline and you need to be used to self-learning and to learning from text and media rather than real life experiences. With a bit of research on the side and no fear of asking questions, you can however multiply your learning experience.

In conclusion: it is not the same as studying on campus but it is not necessarily less effective. You can have a great learning experience online as easily as you can have a lousy one on campus. You need to acknowledge the limits of online study and learn to work around them and then it can be very impactful, satisfying and, above all, GREAT FUN!