Drawing at the Met

Sketch after Michaelangelo

Sketch after Leonardo

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art you can make an appointment at the Drawing Study Room, which is like a library, and they will pull any drawing you want to see from their collection and put it on a stand on the table in front of you. Wow... so I went and did this today, and of course had to choose their two most famous drawings, Michaelangelo's Study for the Libyan Sibyl and Leonardo's Head of the Virgin. I only had a short time with each, and I was pretty overwhelmed with being in the presence of a 499 year old drawing, but I enjoyed the chance to get a good look at them. I'm also inspired to do more master copies from reproductions at home.

Today I also visited Grand Central Academy of Art today. Dan Thompson teaches there and he was kind enough to give me a tour. The school is set up in four huge old classrooms on the 6th floor of a midtown building. Each room is dedicated to a single pursuit: figure study, cast drawings, sculpture for painters, etc, and they have arranged the lighting and painted the walls to be perfect for each pursuit. The school is gathering an amazing collection of casts, and everywhere you see statues set up with lights, stacked in corners, tacked to walls, with students busily working away on detailed pencil drawings.

I've now visited Studio Incamminati, Gage Academy, and Barnstone Studios - between all these, I have certainly had a great little tour of the "American atelier movement" these last few weeks.

Frick Frack etc...

Sketches from the Frick

I spent a couple hours at the Frick Collection today. It wasn't very busy so I could stand and draw without being jostled by throngs. I sketched a Rembrandt self-portrait from 1658, and the lady from Vermeer's "Mistress & Maid" - the mistress is receiving an apparently unexpected letter from her maid, thus the gesture of surprise.

Front steps of the Frick Collection

I also visited 4 galleries today, but I was only really excited by two of them:

Forum Gallery
A works on paper exhibit with some good Modern and contemporary specimens. Got to see my first Stephen Assael up close and in person. He seems to scrape away a lot with a knife of some sort, so he layers lots of dark marks with graphite and charcoal, and then white marks with the scraping. The show as a whole seemed a bit jumbled though, with only the fact that the work was on paper holding it all together.

Hirschle & Adler
A great show of still lifes by Paul Rahilly. His color technique is very impressive - he uses tons of color but manages to keep a compelling value range as well. The gallery was also showing selections from the permanent collection, including these "Allegorical Figures in Blue/Pink" which were just luscious to see up close.

New York is of course all about walking.... and walking.... and taking the subway. I quickly gave up on trying to wear even semi-attractive shoes and have been comfortably clomping around in my San Francisco standard-issue chartreuse green Keens. (I just try to stay out of the way of the many model-types who seem to glide effortlessly down the street in their white headbands, huge sunglasses, and smart little pumps.)

The heat hasn't been record-breaking, just high 80's, but being from San Francisco even 80's is shockingly warm, and the subway platforms are just about unbearable. It's supposed to rain Friday so maybe the heat will break soon. Ah, September in NY!

New York Monday 9/24

Ten days in New York! I am so excited to have time to explore!

My first pilgrimage was to visit Arcadia Gallery, which I first discovered online over a year ago. The current show is "small works" which I was thrilled about, because about 20 artists are represented with several small paintings each. You can see the whole Small Works Show here, but the tiny images on the website do not do the work justice. Camie Davis, Paul Raymond Seaton and Daniel Adel's paintings were particularly stunning in person.

The gallery prints up a large multi-page color brochure/catalog for each of their shows and sells copies of them for just $3. So I now own a handful of beautiful little catalogs for Adel, Seaton, Grimaldi, Hicks, Mackesy and Lipking.

Had a nice conversation with the gallery owner, who guessed I must be a painter, because apparently only painters buy up handfuls of their brochures. He says he does not show "classical realists" per se... rather painters who paint very well. He says he looks for something contemporary and relevant, not simply work that attempts to mimic the past. I told him Myron Barnstone said nearly the same thing to me.

FYI, Arcadia is going to have major works showing at the San Francisco Fine Art Fair at Fort Mason this Sept 28/29. If you are in SF this weekend don't miss it!

After the gallery visit we had a wonderful afternoon walking through SoHo and the Village (see pictures). New York is only 75 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny about 8 days a year, and we caught one such day!

Jacob Collins Interview 2006

Some great quotes from an interview with Jacob Collins (the interview took place a year ago, but I just discovered it):

"One of the things I noticed when I was an art student was that a lot of artists or young art students were made to feel very culturally insecure—even in a socially or socio-economically way. In light of this, they tried to pursue a kind of art, like modernism, that seemed to push forward. Traditional art was, essentially, the art of provincials or hicks, not intellectual or significant."

"When I was a kid, I felt like I was isolated in my pursuit of traditional art forms... There’s a certain amount of regret that I experienced when I was launching into a career where I was pretty isolated: I was doing Traditional art in the 1980s... and gradually, one by one, I found other people who were interested in the same thing—in the beginning I was quite amazed and excited to find another person who also wanted to draw a figure with a coherent structure, or to learn how to put together a painting with paint and glaze.... I started finding people in very mysterious ways: people popped up and showed up at the door. I was very inspired. I found that I was meeting a whole lot of people who had the same strong desire for Traditionalism as me."

"For quite a while when I was starting out, most of the market in New York was for Modern art.... But now it’s changing, it’s changing fast. The galleries are really recognizing the passions of the artists and the interests of the collectors."

Read the whole interview here.

Drawing Marathon

Pencil on paper, 18 x 24 inches

Charcoal on paper, 18 x 24 inches

On Sunday I attended Bay Area Model's Guild Drawing Marathon, which is an all-day drawing event held quarterly. They have a room full of models working all day, with different lengths of poses. I worked at the long-pose model stand, so each of these two drawings was 3-hour session.

Rembrandt in Portland, OR

I visited Portland Museum of Art to see the Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art exhibit. The work is on tour from Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum while that museum is being renovated. It was wonderful to see the Rembrandts in person, I love to stare at his brush strokes and try to fathom how he builds up from transparent darkness to his signature clotted, swirly lights.

As for the other Dutch Masters, I was especially entranced by this Still Life by Jan van de Velde, which surprised me. The reproduction does not do it justice at all, but the painting was just captivating in person. Even standing within inches from the canvas, the illusion of the glass objects emerging from the dark background is never broken. More than just stunning hyper-realism, this painting has a magical, captivating feeling.

(An interesting footnote - smoking was considered a sin, but the wealthy, pious Dutch liked to hang images of the vices they rejected, as a way to display their own righteousness. Which is why so many Dutch still lifes feature pipes and smoking paraphernalia. I wonder, would that be the equivalent of our own most wealthy and pious members of society displaying images of illegal drug paraphernalia?)

At the museum store I bought a fascinating book: Art in the Making: Rembrandt which has gorgeous close-ups of Rembrandt's brush strokes, as well as magnified cross-sections of the paint layers, and analysis of what pigments he used and how he used them. Very fun to find such a technical book.

While in Portland I visited my college friend, painter Scott Conary, whom I had not seen in person in 14 years. He and his wife were kind enough to put me up for the night, and we drank wine and talked art for hours. We had some good discussions, because he does not understand my fascination with classical realism, but at least he liked what I showed him of Michael Grimaldi so we found some common ground :)

Drapery and Pitcher

8.5 x 11 inches, graphite pencil on paper

I decided to work on a drapery study while I have been waiting for my paints to be shipped back from Seattle.

Time Lapse

Juliette Aristides' Still Life Painting Workshop
Gage Academy, Seattle WA, August 2007

This is so cool - Nowell set up his high-definition digital video camera on his tripod and recorded a couple time-lapse films of our art class this week.

You can see the films on YouTube:
Gage Academy on YouTube Day 1
Gage Academy on YouTube Day 2

Notes From Juliette Aristides' Workshop II

Trio: Two Pears and a Fig

8 x 10 inches, oil on panel

The last day of Juliette's still life painting workshop was today. I am so excited to get back to my studio and practice all the new techniques I learned! More on this pear painting at the end of this post.

Here are many of the paintings and excercises I produced during the workshop:

Analysis of a master work

Juliette distributed color copies of master paintings and had us trace over them with dry-erase markers on clear acetate to analyze the structure of the composition. What looks like a chaotic image is actually very carefully composed: It all fits within a neat, perfectly centered diamond shape.

Black and white "poster study" of a master work

Juliette had us mix 9 values of titanium and ivory on our palettes: black, white, and 7 steps between. We then copied a master painting, simplifying the major light and dark areas into flat, "posterized" areas of tone.

Still life "poster study"

Using the same flat values, we painted a quick sketch of our still-life setup. We also did these same studies with cut paper - paper colored black, white, and two shades of gray. (I don't have a picture of this). The cut paper really forced us to simplify, and did not allow "cheating" - no mixing of vaules.

Value study underpainting - Raw umber "wipe-out"
(brown paint is applied and then "wiped out" to show white canvas beneath)

Warm/Cool study

This small study was done with only raw umber, ultramarine blue, and titanium white.

Egg Tiling, about 4 x 5 inches

This was my first attempt at the technique Juliette calls "tiling". After doing a raw umber underpainting, the color phase of the painting is applied stroke by stroke, starting from the darkest dark and stacking "tiles" up to the lightest light. Each tile color is mixed on the palette and applied with a single, short brushstroke. From a distance it blends together, but up close each color note is distinct. You can see sharp edges around my tiles - bad! With practice the goal is to paint tiles that are close in value and color, with no sharp transitions. It's a veery slooow process. But actually very satisfying.

Copper Pot and Baby Onions
12 x 16, oil on panel

I described how I started this painting in a previous post. This is my first attempt applying all of the techniques in a single painting. But after a couple days I decided I had composed a painting with too many complicated elements and too-strong contrasting colors and values. I wanted to try something more subtle to practice the techniques, so I called this one "done" and moved on.

Trio: Two Pears and a Fig
8 x 10 inches, oil on panel

I spent 2 and 1/2 days on this painting. The photograph does not show all the subtle "tiling" I sweated over, but you get the general idea. Juliette encouraged me to slow down (apparently my Daily Painting practice has made me a "speed painter") and look very carefully at the transitions. She had me pay close attention to midtones, the subtle gradations between the darkest darks and lightest lights across the surface of the pears. I feel like I learned so much within this one small painting, and I am so excited to get back to my studio and try more.

Pitcher and Fruit, 6 x 8 inches
Unfinished

I started this painting as a last quick project today, the last day, but did not have time to finish it. But I like the composition a lot, so maybe I'll set it up at home and finish it.

These are the steps Juliette taught for creating a painting:

1. Draw the composition with pencil on paper
2. Transfer drawing to the canvas
3. Ink the major lines with an indelible fine point sharpie pen
4. Paint the whole canvas with raw umber, and "wipe out" to create a tonal underpainting
5. Let the underpainting dry
6. With full color, paint the background, ground plane, shadow side of objects, light side of objects, in that order
7. Apply color with small "tiles"
8. Paint the "least interesting" areas of the painting first - save the best for last

More various notes and tips from Juliette:

• Practice mixing a color wheel with lots of beautiful, clean neutrals
• Lay a note down for a color and leave it - don't over-mix.
• Your palette tends to reflect the painting - mix the colors you will need
• To "pump up" the light in a painting, focus on super-extending the halftones - don't focus on the darkest darks and lightest lights.
• Look at Chardin
• Look at Fantin Latour
• A strong image will read well from a distance
• Economy - solve problems using less (ie, solve an edge using a shift in color, instead of a shift in value)
• Become rock-solid in a few simple things
• Lump shadow shapes and light shapes, not individual objects
• Try one bright color note in a mainly monochromatic painting
• Copy master works, analyze for lines, arcs, value, color distribution

A few links:
Fletcher Palette
Picture Perfect Viewfinder