Ted Seth Jacobs - Drapery Study

Drapery Study I
graphite on paper
18 x 24 inches (detail)

Drapery Study II

graphite on paper
18 x 24 inches (detail)

I've just finished 12 weeks studying drawing with Ted Seth Jacobs at BACAA. We spent the final week modeling a satin jacket which was put on a mannequin. It was an amazingly difficult final project, it really felt like a test of everything Ted has been teaching us about how to analyze three dimensional form.

These are the 4 main principles Ted taught us to apply when analyzing form:

Convex Form
Everything in nature is curved, nothing is flat. All of these curves are convex, there are no concavities. If you look closely at a seemingly-concave drape or indentation, you can always see small convexities along it. This is evidence of the underlying structure. (It sounds implausible, everyone doubts it when they first hear it, but try seeing it, it's there).

Wide to Narrow
Nothing in nature is parallel, every shape starts wide on one end and gets narrow on the other. A shadow shape will always be a fan, not a square or rectangle. Use this concept to "shape the light".

Rounding and Ending
Every shadow rounds over a curved surface and ends before the next form begins. This means every form shadow has a soft edge and a hard edge. Think about the direction of the light - generally the edge of a shadow closer to the light source will be soft, and the edge away from the light will be hard.

What's in Front
The only point on an object not foreshortened is the point directly in front of your eye, everything else is foreshortened. That means every form is in front of or behind another. There are thousands of tiny "horizons", the edge of a shape we look across to see the next shape.

The hardest part is that all of these principles apply to every form. A rounding-and-ending shadow has a wide-to-narrow shape and it always describes a convex form which is in front or behind something else.

TSJ Portrait Workshop: Bridgette

Bridgette
18 x 24 inches
graphite pencil and white chalk pencil on toned paper
about 20 hours

I experimented with a new technique with the white chalk. Unfortunately, what Ted is teaching requires so much modeling, I don't think it works well with the chalk, which gets ground in and over-manipulated in trying to get very fine detail.

Besides all that, I am happy with the drawing, especially how it compares to my first portrait of Bridgette I did 9 months ago. I feel like in this new drawing there is more a sense of the dimensional feel of the landscape of her skin. When I am drawing now I feel like my pencil is actually touching the surface of the form, like sculpting. Previously I only thought about copying lights and darks, so this is a totally different approach for me.

I do think a combination of the two is best. I first have to "flatten" my vision and record the major proportions without thinking of them as three-dimensional, in order to get the proportions right. But when the major proportions are set, there is a sense of switching to a different mode, thinking in 3 dimensions, and looking very closely at the surface, watching how it undulates towards and away from the light, and towards and away from the picture plane.

I think if you look at my first drawing, you'll see that there is no sense of being able to touch the surface of Bridgett's skin, it's just flat blankness.

I have no idea how anyone ever did or does portrait commissions from life. The pressure to achieve likeness in as short a time as possible must be tremendous.

TSJ Portrait Workshop: Melissa

Melissa
18 x 24 inches
pencil on paper
about 30 hours

Despite some problems with the drawing, this is probably the best likeness I have ever done. I may have made Melissa look slightly more gaunt and maybe slightly older than she is, but the proportions and placements I feel are pretty reminiscent of her as a specific person.

I feel like Ted's lessons are really starting to sink in, and my drawing is much improved since I started working with him. He's taught me to think of the 3-dimensional forms of what I am looking at (and subforms, and subforms and subforms...), and to try to understand everything in 3 dimensions, instead of just "copying" a pattern of lights and darks. The result is a much more solidly volumetric drawing.

Next week we will be drawing Bridgett, whom I first drew last year, and I can't wait to compare the drawings and see what I have learned.

I've also started experimenting with softer (darker) pencils. I usually use hard pencils, 2H and H, and just gently go over and over to build up the tone. But for this drawing I tried using a combination of 3B and H pencils. I really liked the effect, much larger range of value.

A weird effect is happening in my eyes recently. I am looking very closely at the model, and I guess I am really staring for quite a long time, because sometimes when I look at my paper to draw I am momentarily blinded. Instead of my paper and my drawing, I see the after-effect of the model's image burned into my retinas. It's very disconcerting.

Aside from classwork, this is a sneak preview of what I am working on in my studio right now:

TSJ Portrait Workshop: Melissa's Profile

Melissa's Profile
18 x 24 inches
graphite pencil on paper
about 20 hours

This is the drawing I did the third week of Ted Seth Jacob's portrait drawing class. This doesn't actually look much like Melissa.

TSJ Portrait Workshop: Mona

Mona

18 x 24 inches
graphite pencil on paper
about 40 hours

My second Ted Seth Jacob workshop just finished it's 4th week (of 6) and I thought I would post what I have been working on. This drawing of Mona was from the first 2 weeks of the class.

Most of the students in this workshop were also in last November/December workshop, so Ted is showing us how the principles he taught us for figure drawing apply to portraiture.

I have to say, portraiture is very very hard. Struggling to get a likeness had reduced me nearly to tears more than once these last few weeks.

Ted always says "you must allow yourself to relax and be open and receive all the information coming into your eyes." I really agree, because I'm finding that forcibly trying to spear a likeness instead just chases it away.

Something about the human face makes us even more critical I think. The ability to recognize a face is hard-wired into our brains, and so we all have a highly developed ability to distinguish faces from one another by minute differences. But seeing the inaccuracies and being able to fix them are not the same thing.