24 hour head study

Here is my completed head study from my March class at Grand Central Academy taught by Gregory Mortenson and Carla Crawford.  I loved doing this painting and I think the colors came out really nice.  I'm excited because I will also be able to take this class for the month of April, so hopefully I will have something to post soon from a new model to work with.  I am particularly happy with a few discoveries I made during the process of this painting:

1. Gamblin's Asphaltum is amazing and can make beautiful temperature shifts in flesh tones

2. It's much better to have lots of roundness in the glabella as it falls back into the eyebrows and eye          sockets.

3. Turpentine works great as a medium and doesn't dry shiny like linseed oil does.

4. Forms on the face gray out as they move away from the light and especially as they recede back toward the shadows, jaw or hair line.

Greg Mortenson and Carla Crawford Portrait Painting Class at GCA

This was my first Saturday morning painting class with Carla Crawford and Gregory Mortenson, both GCA Alumni.  We are having four 6-hour sessions to complete this head study.  I spent the first 6 hours blocking in with graphite a head as close to her likeness and proportions as possible.  At about hour 5, Carla told me that the entire right side of the head was too far to the right, so I had to redraw the right eye, entire nose and mouth to get the foreshortening of the head turn.  At first I was frustrated by the set-back, but after measuring with my chopstick, I realized that she was right and that in my drawing I was trying to turn her tilting head more straight towards me.  This is apparently a mistake that a lot of artists make and a natural tendency to try and straighten up turns and odd angles.

After six hours, I was relieved when the woman next to me said, "Oh good you have a likeness now."  Before next week's class, I'll make a transfer of this drawing to some stretched linen and get ready to start painting!

This is another student's example of what a drawing should look like at the point of blocking in the form and either getting ready to do a transfer for a painting or begin adding tone.

I loved this tiny figure study which was hanging up on the wall in the studio.  It's really inspiring to see what all the other students are working on as you work also.