Day 2084 – the kid

At this point. The Kid 15×22″‘hp Fluid. Forgot to ask his name yesterday when he modeled for us.

Started without a drawing. Drawing large shapes Like oil painters do.

Both light and dark. WHERE are his glasses?!! Took til almost second break before I notice oh wait I can’t see his eye because he has on glasses. Duh.

Started adding

And adding. How did I not notice his mouth was too small too forward?! 🤪

More shadows but that mouth. I am an idiot? The things you don’t notice when you have a live model. And YES I got up and walked off and looked at it.

Finally his mouth is where it belongs. Sigh.

When I went to bed last night.

And the way he looks right now. I moved his right eye up and widened it.
Burnt sienna cerulean cobalt burnt umber hematite burnt scarlet or other. Vlads neutral tint. White Gouache mixed w cad yw light. Ultramarine
Andrews blue Alizarin dioxzine violet vandyke brown indigo

Hmm is that all of them.

Paper is 140# hot press fluid which has stayed oh so flat despite my repeated drenchings of the paper. Love this stuff. Need to order MOH from amazon. AND you can even lift on it which never happens on hot press. Once it’s there it’s there on most hot press.

Margaret who just got a new grand baby today David Christoper 8.8 lb. A BIG boy just like his dad whose birthday was today. Super birthday present for my son Ben.

Xoxoxoxo

Day 291 – Saturday in AikenĀ 

always fun sketching at Al Beyers studio at USC Aiken. Our band of intrepid artists slogged thru the torrential rains for fun and painting in Aiken this morning.  Our model was the lovely Alexendra.

 

  Had a tough time drawing her.  No idea why because I can accurately knock out quick sketches in minutes.

I also think she needs a good crop but can’t decide quite how. 

She’s been through several revisions. This is the current version. 

    

In this one her forearm left arm is too thin. The breast is too flat so I enlarged the breast hoping to make it rounder and raised the upper arm and widened the forearm. I also rounded the hip a bit. 

  

 

My favorite part of the painting is her right hand. I made it pop forward using negative painting using cerulean and burnt umber. 

  

This is one of the crops I tried. Not loving it.  

Painting is done on #140 cheap joes kilimanjaro. I used DS Quin coral with Holbein yellow ochre for the skin tone. Cerulean and burnt sienna make up most of the shadows. The very dark lines delineating the body parts are burnt umber and ultramarine blue. 

 TIP:  One thing I like to do is convert the finished painting to black and white to compare it to the shadows on my original photo also converted to black and white of the model or person I am painting. Converting the original picture allows you to see the darks and lights easily and to not worry about the colors in color photo. The darks and lights are more important than if the eyes are blue or the hair is brown. Most people don’t get the darks dark enough. This way you can. 

The darks after I left the life modeling session this morning. 

  
The darks as they are now. Can you tell the difference?!  

Thanks for looking. 

Day 248 – Another flock of gulls Ā 

The gulls were in the Target Evans parking lot when I drew them. I did paint them at home.

Thinking about writting 50 shades of grey on this one because I have made that many shades of grey today.  No matter how light it was the gouache always dried darker. 

Hmm. Grey is made from schminke indigo Quin Violet and English red a sort of burnt sienna. I did use some cad yellow and white. A lot of white!!!  Background is cad yellow and turquoise. 

There’s only one bird I don’t like after two plus hours of painting. his bill is kind of yellow green. I still have one more page of gulls to draw. 



I think he’s my favorite. 





But it could be him OR 





These two!! 

Thanks for looking. Check back tomorrow. Hopefully time to make progress on them.