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.

Urban landscapes.. that sounds a little silly… Anyway, these are two paintings nearing completion, both are brownstones in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Night painting is particularly difficult, but surprising the results and color were pretty ‘on’, it helps to have an organized pallet.

I have been working on this for about thirty hours, the amount of architectural and sculptural detail is immense, and, although I am not trying to get it all in, I would like the sculptures  to appear as what they are. The top one (Victory) is not so hard, but the cluster of Army and Navy men, horses, bayonets, cannon, and swords on either side of the main columns are quite difficult to capture, and painting outdoors the light changes constantly, which changes the appearance of the sculptures considerably. I  think i shall have one or two more sessions with this painting and call it quits. I am not altogether happy with the color . the sky and trees at this point are ‘too green’ and ‘too blue’ a classic painting mistake – one starts to think about what one thinks the colors are vs what they actually are. Time to read up again on James Perry Wilson.

This is a portrait that I began last year and have been working on and off (more off) since then.

Sketched this yesterday….   I plan to do a painting from it; it’s always better to work out problems in a preparatory drawing than while painting.

I would never have noticed all the sublte things about this scene. I have always liked it but couldn’t put my finger on ‘why’.  But after drawing it, I think its the way the lines of the stones have gently sagged over time, become part of the landscape.   I think that (along with old trees that line the streets) is also the reason older buildings tend to look nicer. Their lines are not all perfectly straight, which quickly becomes monotonous, but they still keep some semblance of rhythm and unity.

There is a common ‘myth’ that western art was great during the classical period, then suddenly fell into utter barbarity during the middle ages and then finally during the renaissance all was well again.   A brief walk through the medieval collection of the Met Museum will dispel that myth rather quickly.

Because most northern french sculpture is anonymous it tends to remain… anonymous, but the level of craft and finish is evident to anyone willing to look.

I certainly like the Renaissance masters, but I also think something very human and spiritual was lost in the stride for realism.

I have been working on this painting of a restaurant in Fort Greene. I plan for it to be a nocturne, so, although i  am doing this stage in the morning, I am putting in color anticipating completing it at night. Thus, the windows are left light rather than dark as they would be during the day.

… well at least, my permit expired. The color was particularly difficult as the light falling on the canvas and pallet is quite different from the light falling on the painting, which is significantly warmer.

I bought a rhodia sketchbook, well, its really a notebook and the paper is much thinner than I’d like. But after seeing this guy, make a sketch with a bic pen, I feel silly complaining about equipment. The sketch is of a circa 1525 statue of Saint Mary Magdalene in the Medieval Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The first photo was taken in a different light with the same exposure but is much ‘warmer’ than the light falling on it (my painting) in the gallery which is cool, while the light falling on the Repin original is much warmer.

I did a quick sketch of this statue before copying @ the Met Museum.