Archive for March, 2010

Back to the Drawing Board

I went back to figure drawing last night at the weekly drawing group that meets in Frederick, MD. Clayton Myer (www.claytonmyer.com) was the model. There was a plastic skull laying around the studio and we posed him in this contemplation of age and death. While we drew, Clayton regaled us with stories of his acting career and the time he played a boxer in an indie film.

What I have been working on

This is a rather large piece (40″ x 30″) that was based on a photograph which I used previously for a small sketch (see January 5th).I find these larger canvases a challenge to keep the whole thing holding together. With smaller canvases, I have a feel for the whole thing, maybe because you can see everything at the same time  when working at arm’s length. But with a larger canvas, the work needs to be done piecemeal. In this case, I first worked on the buildings, then on the foreground, then on the sky, etc. but rarely worked on the piece as a whole. There a quite a few layers here as I tried to work out the kinks in the composition. Though the original photograph has a river in the foreground, during the painting process, the river dried out and a figure appeared, who seems to be looking up at the city spread out before him with amazement and some dismay. The painting seemed to demand a more illustrative approach in order to tell this story.