Update and a Trip to the MFA Boston

I live about 2 hours outside of Boston in New Hampshire, moving here from the Chicago suburbs about 6 years ago. I've wanted to go visit the MFA Boston since before I moved here and, finally, just went this weekend for the first time.

It was perfect timing too. I've been second guessing my decisions on these portraits, particularly the ones I've been doing, including this current one, in which one side of the face is in darkness. What have I been second guessing myself on? Well, mainly how dark to go on that side, the colors that show through, and how much detail and the values to attribute the eye that is cast in darkness. So I went through the collection of paintings, century by century, focusing on portraits with similar lighting and noted their choices. The MFA was perfect for this lesson; they have a great room with several John Singer Sergeant portraits including the Daughter's of Edward Darley Boit, a painting that can not be described. I made my way down in history next focusing on the Colonial portaits of John Singleton Copley, best known for his famous painting of Paul Revere & my favorite in the collection, a painting he did of his brother and his pet squirrel early in his career. I then worked my way through the European paintings on the second floor, again going from the most contemporary to the older. To my complete surprise, at the end of the wing, the MFA boasts an amazing collection of dutch work from their golden age: my favorite still-life painter Claesz as well as several portraits by Rembrandt. How can I get a better teacher than a Rembrandt portrait for my little "problem" in these portraits!? I was so happy I looked through the entire room with tears in my eyes!

As soon as I got to the studio yesterday I reworked parts of the dark side of her face in my portrait, bringing out more of the highlights around the eye and adding a bit more darker value and detail in the eye. I am extremely happy with how it looks now; it just feels right, thanks to the great masters at the MFA!

One thing I was worried about in these portraits was how much "red" I see in the dark side of the face. I wasn't sure if I was seeing wrong, but I was happy to confirm that that's how others see it too, when looking at all the portraits at the MFA. If anyone knows why that is the color left in the dark side of a face, I'd love to know! My theory is that it may be a reverse to aerial perspective.

& now finally for updates! I've decided to rearrange the studio and hang the piece on the wall to work the rest of the drawing.

Standing on the table and leaning over the image with a camera, is just not the best recipe for clear, straight photographs. It is not worth the risk to smudge the work done by taking it off the table.

The plan was to have just a light grey tabletop in the bottom portion of the composition, but I decided to make it into a concrete wall. I walked down to the parking garage down the street from my studio today and took several photographs of the low concrete walls to use as reference. This change of plan will, however, make this small (hah!) endeavor take a bit longer.

If the strange delineated composition of this piece and the last one I did just doesn't make sense to you... let me show you some of my favorite paintings, which I think will clue you in partially to my pshyche.

The Death of Marat by Jacques-Loius David is one of my all time favoites, if not my favorite painting.

as is this painting by Gustave Caillebotte "Paris Street, Rainy Day." Actually look at the range of Caillebotte's paintings and the types of compositions he chose. It makes me salivate.

Add to these a fascination with all things Edward Hopper & I think you WILL understand me better!

Experimental Wisdom 2

I am taking a midday break, having to stand while working on this is taking a bit more out of me than usual. I moved my table out away from the wall and leaned against the wall while working which helped.

An Anonymous commenter asked what colors I used for the face so instead of typing them in, here is a photograph of them. If you are familiar with Polychromos, you should be able to make out the colors I think. If not, I didn't use anything unusual for me so you can search my blog for past skintone colors that look similar.

Yesterday when opening my web browser, which defaults to a news page, I was surprised to see a picture of my town Keene, NH with the heading "America's Most And Least Vulnerable Towns." Surprisingly Keene, NH ranked #3 in the LEAST vulnerable towns to the current economic crisis from a study of over 100 small cities and towns in the US by Forbes magazine.

People must have liked hearing that news because I've been stopping at Starbucks every morning for the past month (I received a $100 gift certificate for my birthday and I am stretching it out). I have been the only one in line or just one other every day for weeks, BUT today there were 9 people in the Starbucks drive-thru line! I guess people feel like they can afford a latte in Keene, NH this week.

Experimental Wisdom

On to the next one!!

I am going for it with this one. It is about 27" wide and 46" tall. Whew. See what I mean.

Since I am using Polychromos on Fisher 400 and they are very unstable on this surface, like pastels, I am more than a bit worried about this piece. How will I get it to the photographers, for instance, without smudging it? I'll worry about that when the time comes I guess.

The piece of paper fits 2/3 of my 6 foot drawing table. Don't freak out though folks, most of the drawing will be the figure at the top and then a bunch of light grey tabletop below it. I should be able to pull this off working standing up and walking around the table to get at specific parts. I would hang it on the wall and work, but it just doesn't suit my technique, and never feels right when I do that excpet for in later stages when I am just fixing things here and there.

Untitled

Untitled.

I've tried to thik of a name for this, but everything I come up with "longing" "Yearning" seems so cliche!

Katherine Tyrrell made a great blog post yesterday on the size of artwork entitled: Juried Art Competitions: Does Sixe Matter. She brings up the fact that artwork seems to be getting bigger and bigger in many galleries and asks the question if size can influence an artwork's effectiveness in a juried show. To which I answered:

Personally, when I view shows, I admit size does make a difference, but size must be backed up with skill. A big painting does not make it good, but a good painting that's big makes a huge impact. On a another note, the smaller pieces in shows that are MAGNIFICENT despite their size, get a boost from the size matter as well, IMO. I'll never forget going to my first CPSA convention in Chicago and being able to see Cecile Baird's work clear across an adjoining room of the gallery and it pulled me to it. When up close it was just as beautiful; that makes a winner as well. So in short, yes i believe larger work (if good or up to par) can be a shortcut to success in a show where the winners are juried in person, but that doesn't mean small works can't have impact as well. I just believe the smaller works have to be just a bit better in skill terms to win the prizes.

& in honor of that great post of Katherine's, here's a shot of this image in my studio so you can a feeling of the scale. Not too big, not too small.