Mary Magdalene

I stumbled on this row of angels in Green-Wood Cemetery last fall. I am still finishing up the background.

  … and a new appreciation for Rembrandt.

I had about 20 minutes in-between appointments, so rather than twiddle my thumbs, I started this sketch of the exterior of Grace church on 12th and Broadway. As long as you have a sketchbook, (or notebook if you’re a writer) handy there’s never such thing as wasted time.

Two more sessions with this. The earth pigments (raw and burnt umber) are sucking up and flattening a lot of color, so this will require a heavy oiling in.

Like mankind itself, this work is unfinished. Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men.

I started the fourth sitting of this painting today. Rembrandt  paintings look like they  were executed with little effort – spontaneous, alive, expressive.. there is no sense of ‘labor’ like a great ballet dancer or athlete – he made it look easy.

Trying to copy him is much harder, in my opinion than the more mechanical methods of academics and even the earl Renaissance painters I enjoy. With Rembrandt there is not a process, a secret varnish, a ‘trick’ color – it is simply masterful execution done with confidence. That is the hardest of all things to try to copy.

Sketched in the Medieval hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have done several sketches of this statue. I find high gothic sculpture far more expressive an interesting than classical.

I started a master copy of Rembrandt’s Herman Doomer, a popular choice for copyists at the Met. I took this photo after the 3rd sitting, which means about nine hour’s work (not including prepping the canvas).
In al the time I have spent copying at the Met I have never done a Rembrandt, which is usually the first choice of artist. I am more drawn to the techniques and aesthetics of the early Renaissance, but in the physical act of copying this, I appreciate it more. I do think there is ‘something’ to using the hand and not just ‘contemplating’ -contemplating brings a different sort of understanding about a painting.

A two hour head study.

I am working primary from life. I have always wanted to do a painting of ballet dancer, but escape falling into the cliches of Degas. The model is an actual dancer with ballet training, and that has helped I think, get some level of authenticity.
The white around the model will be painted over.

I started this painting a few weeks ago, with the intention of painting from imagination and my own conceptual drawings rather than a model and photographs. There will be many glazing layers applied. I have applied the first two, and there are about 10-20 more to go on areas like the blouse and robe. The final colors will be deeper and more muted.

It’s been awhile since I have posted. I have been working on some other paintings, but finally took a day off and went to the Met and sketched.
This statue is in the medieval hall, and is northern French, dating from about 1375.

This is a preliminary drawing for a Virgin and Child painting. For the painting, I will be using techniques that I acquired copying  Grannaci’s Virgin and Child. They  are a departure from most contemporary academic  and direct techniques.

I have been working on this since early May. I first envisioned painting it on a rainy day.. getting a grey sky and luminsicne from the white stone.. but, it turned out to be a very sunny, dry summer. The painting is still emerging from that first overcast day but it’s slowly getting there. I went a little too high on chroma on the green in the statues. I looked at them and thought ‘green’ when in reality they are mostly yellowish in the light and black green-grey-blue in the darks.
The lampost on the otherhand are bright green but not that green, but I want the post to look ‘real’ rather i want it to be a thick impasto that will help add depth and light play to the painting.

I began a color study of Grace Church’s spire:

The sun quartered around one of the buildings next to it, and quickly the spire was between me and the midday sun. Not an optimal painting arrangement! So, I opted for the cooler indoors of Grace and did a quick drawing of one of the doorways:

Drawing Gothic structures, or even Gothic revival ones, is particularly fascinating. The intricate details and complex structural lines are very difficult to capture with any accuracy unless you try to make some sense of them. And they do make sense.
I was looking at this doorway overwhelmed by the embellishments until I thought.. to be built.. it had to be done in a methodical way. Working on that assumption, I looked at first looked big geometric shapes. But the embellisments and rose windows are based on mathematical patterns, best described by this video by a precocious math student..

I drew this from memory after mentally ‘sketching’ this person during part of church service:

Doing memory sketches of people in public is a little daunting. One doesn’t want to invade one’s privacy, and, well, its not polite to stare! But I assume anyone who takes a podium, pulpit, stage, or leading worship is putting themselves on view, albeit for other purposes. Many artists sketch on the subway, often people asleep. I’ve done that too, but in some ways that’s more of an invasion of privacy.

But artists draw from life… just about every fiction work has characters based on people the author knew in ‘real life’ and in many way’s that no different than an artist’s sketch. Of course, with a novel the person is usually obscured by name and description changes, where the very purpose of a memory (or any ) sketch is to capture the true essence of what you are observing. I’ve developed my own internal code of ethics about it. I would never go beyond what I would feel comfortable with were I the subject, and I am a pretty private person.

This is a quick life sketch of a bald eagle:

Where did I see a Bald Eagle? Prospect Park. No, it wasn’t wild (though bald eagles have been spotted as close as the George Washington Bridge. This bird was part of Prospect Park’s “Raptor Fest” . It was nice to see these beautiful animals up close. I have often sketched the taxidermed (is that a word?) specimens at the AMNH. As useful as they are, they cannot compare to the living thing. The specimens’ color has faded, the feathers and eyes lack the glimmering iridescence of the living birds. I took plenty of photos see here. I believe in the power of observation and sketching but opted here to take photos and when you have a camera with you, your powers of naked observation inevitably take a ‘back seat’ ; you worry about the focus, the lens cap, if the power’s on, composing the picture, and all the mechanical observations (not to mention looking through a lens, which is not bifocal) take away from the time and mental effort of observing from life.

On the other hand, i was able to snap motion shots that I could not have gotten sketching -or had i chose to sketch more I could not get the wide range of reference photos from so many different species.

Lastly, some sketches from Prospect Park:

Some men were fishing by the boating pond, and it struck me that I may as well been out in the countryside somewhere. This was the sort of thing that lends itself better to sketching than photgraphing.. a mood, particular ‘pieces’ of a scene that create an idea or a mood.