Persephone-thing

Apart from the terrible scan and the forgotten foot, I'm actually really fond of this drawing. 'Far and Away' is its working title, since I can't call it 'A Memory of Spring' while taking myself seriously.

Next up: the studies for the mosaic behind her, since I do in fact know better than to jump right into that. See also, why I spent so long procrastinating on finishing this.

The Long Road drawing, before and after

It's been almost a month, and I just realized I never posted the final drawing for my IMC painting. Before I do, here's a reminder of the sketch I brought:

And here's the drawing I wound up taking to the board, after critiques from everyone:

There's a delicate balance to strike when doing the drawing for the IMC: if it's too rough, not only will the teachers not have much to work off of in their critique, but you get to spend it wallowing in the shame of bringing something that looks like that in front of Irene Gallo and Boris Vallejo and Scott Fischer (see: me, last year. scroll through this post for the 'drawing' I brought and the drawing I wound up with). If it's too refined, however, you get to enjoy watching hours of your careful work get ripped apart, as the instructors point out all of the things you did wrong/could have done better/didn't even think of doing.

I think this year I hit the correct balance. The composition and values are generally there (though I later wound up regretting not having done a more refined value study), and the gesture is conveyed along with just enough details to give the piece context for what I see in my head. Especially when combined with the color studies and initial thumbs, it communicated the direction I see myself going in, and it gave the instructors a clear idea of what I was trying to do - which meant they were able to give me equally clear suggestions on how to do it.

Tithe

Tithe, 16.5"x23"

Whoops, I seem to have absolutely forgotten to post the final to my blog. You can see its progression here!

IMC 2013

Last year's IMC was a revelation; this year's IMC was a staggering confirmation.

It's always hard to find the words for things like this. So much gets packed into a week, and it's in such a unique context - it's nothing like real life, and very hard to parse once I leave. Beyond that, I still struggle to not feel like I'm boasting when talking about how well my art was received and the things people said to me.

My painting this year way by absolutely no means perfect, and there are are a lot of things I struggled with in the process... but the responses I got from my peers and teachers give me no real chance to doubt myself. For Rebecca Guay to tell me that the emotion is there, for Mike Mignola to compliment me on my composition, for Donato to call the hands I'd just painted good - god, it just kept going, and I sat there shellshocked because I barely know what I'm doing, I'm twenty-three, I graduated last year. But the voice in the back of my head that wormed its way in sometime during college has been rendered by and large silenced: the struggle now is no longer in overcoming the conviction that I'm mediocre, but in believing enough in my abilities not to get discouraged by the uphill climb.

All of the teachers had things for me to fix, places where I needed to push - "You're just so timid!" said Dan Dos Santos, shaking his head, laying in cadmium yellows and reds and oranges into the light on my figure - but the message I got loud and clear is, at this point, I need to take those hours of my ass in the chair and the brush in my hand and keep going. I'm not there yet: I'm missing that polish and fearlessness that I see in all of the art I love. But I look at my art and see something coming toward the surface, and each successive painting is capturing something a little closer to my goal.

In the coming year, I'm planning on taking Rebecca's SmART School class. It's expensive, especially for a Starbucks barista, but I've watched the art that's come out of it and it's frankly astonishing. Two years of the IMC have rocketed my art upwards at a pace I would never in a million years would have believed possible, and I'm absolutely going back for a third year... but if I'm serious about improving, I have to use all the resources available to me.

I don't really know what my point was supposed to be. All I do know is I left the IMC last year deeply shaken by having had the unconscious, deep-seated understanding that I was mediocre ripped from me - and this year I left feeling a little blinded by how clearly I saw the path at my feet.

You guys, I am going to make so much art.

IMC assignment, take 2

So, about that last post -

- some peers and also Dan Dos Santos gave me feedback which amounted to 'you are really in your comfort zone/you're better than this/push harder push harder', and when I went back to the thumbnails I came to the realization that I just... had nowhere to go with them. There's a lot of emotional exhaustion tied up in them, both from the timing of having my awful crash on the same day as the assignment email came out, and from the fact that I just don't like A Midsummer Night's Dream to begin with, really - and I decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

Also contributing to the decision to abandon/step away from my Midsummer illustration was my acceptance to Light Grey Art Lab's October show, Rolemodels. The piece for it is due mid-July, and if I had waited to start on it until after I returned from the IMC, I would have had less than a month to do it from thumbs to finish, coming off of a week that last year not only left me exhausted, but also emptied my artistic tank down to nothing.

Beyond the way that the timing works for doing the Rolemodels piece at the IMC, it's an image I'm really, really excited about. I was already exhausted by Midsummer and I hadn't even gotten out of the thumbnail stage - but every stage of this piece so far has been nothing but inspiring.

The show itself is for D&D-type fantasy self-portraits, with all of the artists being one of several classes and having to represent themselves through that context. I'm a paladin in this case, a religious warrior, and I (being spiritual but very non-religious) was shocked to find a D&D-canon deity that really did fit: The Path of Light, more philosophy than god, which holds its adherents to honing their personal skill and following the light.

As I was thumbnailing I found myself drawn again and again to the struggle of following that light - I shied away from triumphant poses (that one thumb aside) and focused on the journey. The thing about the thumb I chose, the thing about the sketch I did, is that I feel in it the exhaustion that I know intimately, but also the hope and the urge to go forward.

I hope that the painting can carry that sense of weight and forward motion.

IMC Thumbnails!

It took a little bit of work to get excited about illustrating A Midsummer Night's Dream, but when I realized how strongly I felt about Oberon's actions against Titania, I had a strong hook to work from.

I know that Midsummer is one of Shakespeare's comedies, but I just... I'm creeped out my almost all of the relationships in the play. What Oberon does, in using love-in-idleness on Titania, is drugging her with the specific intention of humiliating her into submission: the word used is 'love', but it's made explicit (haha) that she's supposed to have sex with whatever forest animal she comes across.

Anyway. I clearly have some opinions! Here are the thumbs I did while working through them.

For this year's IMC, we need to bring not only a sketch, but four thumbnails as well. Doing large (for me), clean thumbnails was an... experience. But it forced me to clear up the gestures!

I ran them by some people, and with the feedback I got I went back and made a fifth - which is the one I'm working into a sketch now.

Color studies will happen... later. I need to move into a new apartment and then unpack my studio, first!

The long and winding road

I know I talked a lot about making mistakes at just about every turn in my post about this piece, but I didn't actually... give examples. In the interest of science, therefore, here's my documentation of the process of the painting itself, with helpful notes on what I was doing, and what I did wrong. It's not so much that I like making my failures public spectacle, than it is how much I value marking my progress down for my own future edification and understanding.

See that face? That, boys and girls, is called 'losing the drawing'. Also, at this point, I had no idea what was going in the wicker ball; also also, I had no real clue what my value structure actually was.

I threw a dead bird in there because it seemed like a good idea, and painted out the eye, and knocked out some more of the orange, and started on the wicker. Can we talk for a second about how absolutely stupid it is to paint front-to-back with something like a wicker ball? Especially since I didn't even have what we'd be seeing through it referenced or drawn. God. 

Well, enough of that horror show: time to repaint the face and deal with that window.

The hair was terrible in shape and feel, and I finally accepted this and started to paint it out to redo at a later time. However, the shape I wound up carving out was right, somehow, and so I stopped.

The face itself still needed work. I also started in on the background, with some better color and value, but still not quite correct on either count.

There, that looks a lot better, doesn't it? At some point in this mess I referenced, drew, and painted in the arm and part of the midsection that one could see through the wicker ball.

 

I was absolutely and truly furious about the way I'd painted in the hair, so I backed away from it until I could look at it without seething.

When I came back, I decided to avoid the problem areas and work on something I knew I could execute well: hands (and flesh).

I like hands~

Hands, I know I can execute. They require care and proper effort, but I can rely on my own ability and that is a comfort.

Comforts like that are necessary when throwing myself against, say, some deeply uncooperative hair.

Time to step away from the hair again so I can work her clothes up from their first pass, finally. (value structure? what value structure?)

Oh, that value structure. 

Now that I figured that out, time to second-pass the wicker ball, because the flat colors the first time around aren't... okay.

At this point, I liked the face and the hands and hated the rest of the painting. Or, well - I was bored by the rest of the painting, and furious at how long it had taken to get so close to the end, and how at a loss I was for what to do to it to make it interesting.

So, in a fury, I threw pure cadmium red on my 000 brush and went to town.

As it turned out,  it was exactly what I needed.

I did so much wrong, and took the long way around so many times, that it's more than a little frustrating to look back on. But it came out in the end, and what I achieved in spite of myself is something to be proud of - and to learn from.