Oil Painting - Week 6

A tough day in class yesterday. On the right is work from last week, supposed to be a 'warm/cool' temperature painting in burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and white. John said I had far too little color for the temperature to read. So I worked nearly three hours in class and it looked even worse. Very late last night around midnight, I wiped the canvas clean of yesterday's work and started again, painting over last weeks dry paint.

I worked again today and it has more color and possibility so I'll give it another run, maybe Sunday. Cast drawing practice tomorrow and cast drawing class on Saturday. And it's the end of February already.

Master Copy: Andrea Finished

I've done as much work on Andrea as I want. I'm not going to finish his shirt, since the hardest part, his face--especially the shadowed side--is done. And I did NOT use a stomp or finger to smudge or smear or shade. Only thousands of pencil lines over and over and over! Actually a soothing process. But DONE. And I'm reasonably pleased with the outcome. I see corrections that should be made, but I want to move on to another.

Cast Drawing - Week 5

On the left is a modified photo of the cast I'm working on in class. The right is the start of my in-class drawing...Bacchus? It wasn't as frustrating today as usual. Maybe, just maybe, I'm catching on?

Cast Drawing - Week 2-4

This is my at-home-practice cast drawing -- and with more time spent with him, I'm actually starting to like the cast itself. My work in the class is so poor it's not worth posting. Hopefully we'll have more time to spend with one cast in class and I can make some progress. I'm so slow and I don't seem to be able to focus or concentrate in class as well as I can at home.

I missed the last class since we had a trip to Ashland, Oregon already scheduled. Hate to miss classes! They're so valuable and they are helping me, even though they're so very difficult. And they're just flying by!

Oil Painting - Week 5

I'm so behind with posting I'll never catch up with the pics of cast drawing, oil studies, life sketches. Yikes. So here is this week's work from the oil class. The task was to paint with only burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and white. Bill bought me the little pitcher at our favorite antique stopping place on I-5, Kalama, WA. He bought me more gorgeous 'props' too, but they're put away til birthday week...which starts NEXT week!

The good news is I'm behind with posting because I've been spending that time in the studio and not taking time to take pics :-)

Oil Painting - Week 3-4

My first painted sphere nearly finished. It needs at least one more pass but then on to other things. Or maybe on to another sphere for more practice.

Progress: Master Copy

A little more work on Andrea.

Progress: Master Copy

OK, so remember my copy of Michelangelo's only surviving portrait, his drawing of Andrea. I've spent some more time working on it with my new knowledge and skill ? from my classes at Gage.

And just in case you can't tell...On the left is Michelangelo's. On the right is my copy, still not quite finished. Double click on the image for a larger detailed pic.

Michelangelo Buonarroti
1475-1564

"Portrait of Andrea Quaratesi" a drawing - Around AD 1532

His only surviving portrait drawing.

According to Giorgio Vasari, one of Michelangelo's biographers, he was most reluctant to make portrait drawings 'unless the subject was one of perfect beauty'. This is the only surviving portrait drawing by Michelangelo. Drawn in black chalk, it shows the head and shoulders of a young man, Andrea Quaratesi (1512-85) who was one of several noble youths much admired by Michelangelo. Though from a noble Florentine family, it is possible that Michelangelo tried to teach this young Florentine how to draw, as the artist wrote on a drawing now in Oxford: 'Andrea, have patience'. The young man wears contemporary dress, a cap flat on his head, as he looks out to his left. The drawing is lit from the left so that the delicate shadows are formed by small, careful parallel strokes of chalk.

Michelangelo rarely gave his drawings away, other than to close friends or pupils. He presented these carefully finished 'presentation drawings' only to those whom he admired and loved. In his own words, they were carried out 'for love rather than duty'.

Information provided by the British Museum.

Oil Painting - Week 2

At home practice, second week, new painting, same sphere.