Studio space for me! Part 2

 At first, built a shelf and brought a dinner table that the neighbour throwing away. I talked to the owner if she mind I take it... She said go ahead!!! It was very very heavy to carry tho it was for free, anyway lucky me!

And to make the room separated between natural light area and light controlled area, I hung the curtain. It was very tough job, had to rent a 12ft ladder and carried it to my space on the 3rd floor of the building... 

 I set up the self and easel like this.

I have quite a few projects going on. Old master copies (oil and charcoal works).

And practicing direct painting. 2015 first work I finished is this. Vanitas theme...

Studio space for me! Part 1

At the end of December 2014, I acquainted a lady who has a studio in an artists co-op building.

Through her, I found there was an opening and I talked to admin of the group and luckily got this space. It's 16' x16' with 10-12 'high high ceiling!, 2 big windows facing to east side.

I moved in with minimum equipment first.

It's a nice size studio, and I though it would be great to make it half room for natural light setting, and the other for control light setting. I masked one window, but still full of light. 

So I had to plan a bit more to make it work (continues...).

Start of the new year 2015

A couple of days before the end of 2014, my husband asked me to prepare a some greeting cards. So I had to generate something new yearly very quickly. I had a linocut mat, so I tried. 

Year of the ram. The writing said step by step into the new year.

It's been a long long time to do "版画 (han ga)". I used to do every year for new year's greeting when I was a little until I started to draw Anime characters for that.

Anyway, wish you have a wonderful year. 

Red Chalk

Took a workshop with one of the instructor in the school in early Summer and made some copy of old masters...

  And made one by myself at home. I believed that this drawing by Da Vinci, tho the original one is done by one of Da Vinci's student.... Haha!

un ragazzo abbraccia un agnello

This was inspired by Catholic theme. Done it after the Red chalk workshop. It was fun, tho need more practice. I wanted to add some gold leaves, tho back ground was paper, and not so compatible with the glue of it. I'll try maybe wooded board next time.

  

Completion of the 3rd level

This is my latest work that I finished in May. Well, strictly speaking, I can still work on my paining to make it better. But I got permission to go on, so I decided to think about next project, my 1st still life painting.

And here is the process of this for people who are curious about it.

Few interesting things happened during I was working on this. Tho, one episode form them. My extra neighbour left the school saying the school's method is too much control and no freedom.  And when she left, she pat my shoulder specifically and good-bye me. We were not close at al since I didn't like her strog perfume, but anyway, it was too bad she decided to leave school since I can see her style of work needs realism and if she has better skill to do so, her work will be different level. I didn't realized until she left about she was suffering beside me who was working patiently on tight controlled theme.  She didn't like the medium (she was using charcoal) and didn't have patience to get used to it. I realized as the work turn to tighter an tighter, it is easier and easier to fix the mistakes. For me, it was like the work guided and showed me the part I need to work on.   So In the end, It was interesting experience like the process was a conversation between me and the paining. 

End of the semester

Here are 2 figure works done in this semester. One is red chalk style. 

And the other one is body part study. I have done infant with mandolin drawing which gave me a good sense of how to render fingers. I got a good feedback from my teachers and classmates. Another thing to note for this irk is, hand and arm is still first painting stage, but thigh and knee were 2nd painting stage. I liked that I can jump into 2nd stage earlier and correction and branding at the same time.

Portrait painting, Alla Prima and direct method

I wash disappointed by my painting, so I took a couple of workshops of the school. 1st one is portrait painting from live model. Yes, this workshop is exactly what I needed. here is the final product (unfinished). Using photo and using live model have big difference, and using live model make painting easier to obtain realism for me, sure there are some disadvantages too, tho. 

And after this workshop, I took Alla prima. I absolutely love it. Of course until I get it there were a lot of frustrations. But once I got general idea what Alla Prima is, it was a lot of fun with cool brush strokes. Asian male is limited palette, and man with blue shirts is full palette.

Since the model of the evening class had to leave a moth early, we had an opportunity to try direct painting, it is like Alla prima, but 8 day length. It was great fun and I see my improvement in fresh tone. I could only attend 4 days, wish I could finish this work....

Portrait from the photo

I finally finished (may do some minor correction tho) the portrait of my Italian teacher. I like my  painting more than photo. But I think I mis the point. Now I confused what is classical realism and what is photo realism.... I wonder how can I differentiate??? I guess this all I can do by myself without instruction. Feel like I'm stuck!!!!

Black and white and blue

My nephew when he was 18months old. Held my mandolin and observed it carefully as if he was looking for where the sound coming from...

Few things to update...Part 2

Here are figure studies that I have been working on since May. Unfortunately both are uncompleted.

Red pencil on stained paper, about 12x16". I like a bit rough style, but this one needs to be take care of the edges.

Monochrome study of standing man, 16X30in, oil on linen. This one is closed to finishing of the first painting stage, not quite tho. Looking through from the back side, I could see some places meed more paint application, especially the edge between the figure and back ground. Oh well, next time!

Few things to update...Part 1

June 27th, finally I completed the 8th project. This time, I made my first painting very smooth, so second painting was mainly making it more smooth and adjusting the colour/temperature. Comparing to the first painting stage, it looks more rich and vivid.
I could make it the left lower corner background colour a bit more yellow, but thought enough already, so didn't. In the end, this project turned out more like super realism style. 

16x30in. Oil on linen.

New mugs

I hadn't done any pottery works for a while so I decided to check what I had left behind. Found 4 mugs, 2 tea pots, and 2 rice bowls that were before and after green wear firing. I wanted to try drawing something using slips, so I tried cats on the mugs. Here is how they turned out.

I'm basically happy about them. Colour became lighter, but still visually OK. I'll think about other design to draw for new works.

These mugs are on sale for $20 each (+shipping).

Red chalk Gustavo

Last month was quite busy. I was in Italy (holiday) for 2 weeks. I love Italy, not only Italian fine art works, but also weather, food, and atomosphere. This time I was in South, especially Sicily driving around country side. So refreshing, inspiring..., I didn't want to come back at all...

This is red chalky pencil work. Compared to the one http://mkchart.blogspot.ca/2010/10/country-bumpkin-conte-work.html I did few years ago, I think this is more sophisticated.... Ha-ha...!

How academic drawing proceed...

Here is my 30+ hour drawing (unfinished). This was a parts study, and I was hoping to do serious rendering for legs. Each works represent 5 hours of work. I used charcoal pencils with toned 300 lb Arches paper.

finishing the 1st painting

My ipod camera is a horrible quality of the resolution, but anyway, here is my work finished 1st painting stage. One of the instructors always picks up the wrong value and hard/sharp edges like drives me crazy, so I was extra conscious about these points not him to say that again (yeah, he was that annoying).  In the end, it became sort of nature of my painting style, so I can't say bad about him, tho. Ha-ha. I started to 2nd painting stage and so far so good. Just take more time to refine the detail more softer and as accurate as possible to complete this project. I have no idea when I can be done... Still long way to go.

Colour pencils

I love charcoal/conte works. Recently, I'm in love with Trios crayons works. I also like to use toned paper, especially the process of toning the papers brings my mood warming up. :-)

This one, I toned the paper with Acrylic paint, blue grey with a bit of orange. Then I used Stabilo's blue, brown, General's charcoal pencil, and Wolfits' white pencil. The image was borrowed from here; http://ewoud57.deviantart.com/art/Statue-199811619

get your pencil sharpen to be ready...

 This morning, the model was lilly, who is one of scarce asian feature model. I like her, she pose very well so not make me bored.

I'm especially happy with 10 minutes poses, somehow look like three grace to me, one has no face tho... Ha-ha.

Afternoon model was Simon. He's a great model for foreshortening, 'caz he often poses like yoga or some sort. And today's title, be ready thing, the reason why. I used an unsharpened black (conte?) pencil for afternoon switching from Prisma colour pencils, and it was very difficult to control... look below.

 The lead part of the pencil is about 4 mm diameter, this drawing was done on about 12' x 18' size. So 4 mm discrepancy is huge enough to make my drawing not resemble to the model.  In the end, took longer to articulate the contour line... This was a good lesson for myself to remind me to make my weapons sharp all the time... 

Parts study

These days, I am trying to review human/animal anatomy to improve my drawing. I used my 6 inch muscle man to do some back muscle study, but he is not good enough.

http://www.famemaster.com/show.asp?id=100&nid=0&listid=168055&i=

'caz when I look at an anatomy book, his muscle and tendon(?) don't agree with the book. It confused me.

I am seriously thinking to buy this;

http://d-anatomystore.com/human-anatomy-human-skull-highly-detailed-and-accurate-ecorche-male/

or this;

http://www.anatomyed.com/Male1_Figure_Cawrse.htm

It is not so realistic to get these dream items right now. Too bad.., so all I can do is just copy some anatomical drawing plates.... Ha-ha...

Already 11days past!

It is always surprising that how time goes so quickly... I thought we have just cerebrated a new years day, and already 11 days have gone... 

Anyway, today I wanted to practice to incorporate white on coloured paper.  Morning pose was rather boring to me, so it was perfect to go into the detail. 3 drawing below are 2-15mins and a 20 mints.  

And the afternoon was Mr. Gustavo, my muse and sometimes the good adviser. This drawing was 1 hour pose.

My plan to do in this month is review anatomy and watch all the humane figure instructional videos. I tend to get bored quickly, so just be patient.. X-(