Breakthrough

oil on linen 16 x 20



Dear Reader,

I don't know if I have mentioned it, but I have been battling the Flu for the past 2 weeks. I felt good enough to go paint at Don Hatfield's figure painting class yesterday. It was a packed studio and I set up in the middle and just did not worry what the pose would look like at my angle. You can never tell what you will get unless you pose the model yourself . I tried not to let the direct angle of the models front leg bother me and I went at painting the entire figure.

The painting session is about 3 hours and I'm glad the time was so short as I probably would have added a lot of detail and made it look like one of those academic exercizes ( not that there is anything bad with that ). Everything Don was saying in class clicked. He instructed all of us that the ballet dress was the star in this pose and it was our challenge how we would treat this bright orange form. There were so many folds and bends and stuff that he directed us to look at the forms and planes and try to simplify as much as we could to tell the story. The subtle color temperatures also had to be recognized in order to really sell the impression of color and light.

I was exhausted after the painting session and I am happy with the outcome. I am such a different artist when I paint directly from the model. I am really a Jekyl and Hyde from my Illustration personae.





I was talking with Robert Sandidge after class ( he painted a real beauty ) and I commented that I was mentally exhausted. I had left it ALL on the canvas. He made an interesting observation. Painting involves decision upon decision upon decision. Add up all the decisions and its as if you are the chairman of the board at a corporation and making important decisions one after the other for 3 hours straight.





I have really benefited from Don Hatfield's coaching. He has a keen eye and he has an intuitive grasp in how to resolve problem areas. In fact, the model had her hand on the foreground leg and it looked like a string of tootsie rolls. I was struggling with it and he directed me to decide what I was going to do about it. Since I figured only me and those in the classroom would know that her hand was on the leg I decided to eliminate her hand and make it look like it was hidden behind her leg. It worked for me.

____

Painting Tip......The Model was resting on black velvet . Since I was using Pythalo Blue as my cool I mixed it right out of the tube with Utrecht's Cad Red Light and it really gave me a rich dark black that was " In the Light ". Try it .