Wax Bloom

Almost there. The next update should be the finished drawing. The photo doesn’t quite do it justice – the darks are darker, and the jeans really don’t look quite so much like the jacket in terms of color.

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 8 x 14″ 

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I was reading through the portraiture forum on Wetcanvas this afternoon when I encountered this thread, featuring this painting:

Oil Study by David Simons

“Hmmm”, I said to myself, “why does this look familiar to me”?

It’s a really great oil painting by David Simons, but I knew I had seen it before. Not the painting – the subject.

And where did I see it, you ask? Why, at the 15th Annual CPSA International Exhibition just this past summer! Here, have a look the colored pencil version of the same subject, as seen in “To The Point”, the organization’s quarterly newsletter:

As seen in To the Point

I know, right? What an incredible coincidence that BOTH of these artists went to the Bahamas and sat practically on top of one another to draw this guy! But wait…five more minutes of digging through the Wetcanvas Image Reference Library and we find….

The Reference Photo

So, yeah – I now see how serious a matter it is that folks work from their own photographs if they intend to enter that work into a competition. I remember being really blown away by this drawing when I saw it at the Strathmore, but to be honest – I feel kinda cheated now. It’s a technically masterful drawing, but it has no soul because theres nothing original about it. And now, at least one incredibly similar work exists by another artist. And, judging from the thread on the reference photo’s page, probably more, all clones of one another. Thats just ridiculous.

Sort of makes me wonder how many other drawings in that show were staggeringly well executed yet meaningless reproductions.

And to be perfectly clear, it’s Sherry Eid’s piece that beat out one-hundred and twenty-four other portrait and figure drawings to be one of the elite twenty-seven that were actually accepted into the show that I take issue with, not Mr. Simon’s one-hour oil study..

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More than a little concerned over the color of the pants…a bit too close to the color of the jacket (which I’ve made more purple to deviate) for my liking…and I don’t recall for the life of me the technique I used for the jeans in “Jump!“…I’ll work it out.

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 8 x 14″ 

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This is about the halfway point now, I think – perhaps a bit further.

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I was procrastinating this evening, so took some photos of my studio, uploaded them to flickr and added lots of little notes.

 Have a look if you’re interested in seeing light sabers, action figures, or my cat. 

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Nicole and Katherine have talked about this at length, and there is an interesting thread on the matter on scribbletalk, but essentially the UKCPS has added two new rules this year to be eligible for their annual show:

1. If you posted your work-in-progress on a forum and accepted and acted on critiques or advice on the piece, it is now considered a collaboration and is ineligable.
2. If you didn’t take the photograph you are working from, the piece is ineligible.

Most folks are understandably up in arms about the first one, as lots of us rely on feedback via the web for our growth as artists. I think the rule is a bit draconian, but I see the point. If I did a drawing without any direction, and lost to a drawing that had been massaged and directed by the denizens of the wetcanvas forums, I’d feel a bit cheated. It levels the playing field, so to speak.

The second rule introduces a bit of a grey area for me, as it considers every photograph a deliberate work of art. Consider these scenarios:

1. Joe Artist tears out a page of a magazine that bears a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II as taken by Annie Leibovitz and proceeds to do a wonderful colored pencil recreation of the photo. He crops the photo and leaves out some of the crown jewels, but the lighting and major compositional elements remain.
2. Frank Artist does a drawing of his daughter from a snapshot his mother took on a sunny fall afternoon. He too crops the image, makes some adjustments and changes the dimensions of the canvas to suit him, but the similarity between the photo and the drawing are obvious. Oh, did I say Frank Artist? I meant me.

So a snapshot of a little girl versus a carefully thought out, prepared photo session with a monarch. Is there a difference? Is “Jump!” ineligible simply because my mother pushed the button on her point-and-click rather than me?

What are your thoughts? Is there a difference between an Annie Liebovitz photograph and a Joyce Chipman snapshot in relation to it being used as a resource for your own art?

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Progress on the jacket, and a photo in better light.

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 8 x 14″ 

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This evening’s progress in a desaturated, washed out photo.  I swear, it’s really popping off the canvas here in my studio.

Colored Pencils on Pastelbord, 8 x 14″ 

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Well, its been a year since I started drawing again. Since completing Clara on March 3rd of 2007, I’ve done fifty-one portraits.

My technique has changed dramatically in that time, going from cross-hatching to very saturated and painterly. I’ve gone from using white cold press illustration board exclusively to prefering colored surfaces and as of late, sanded surfaces like Pastelbord.

A quick look at what I was producing a year ago:

And what I am producing now:

Huge difference, I’d say. Skin tones are more modeled and realistic, the eyes have life…it just feels like a more accomplished piece.

For an even more stunning comparison of progress, lets have a critical look at my self portraits. This one, done in 2004, embarasses me to no end. At one point I was really proud of this piece.

While its a likeness, its not exactly a good one. The composition is poor, the execution is sloppy, the eyes are flat, the modeling of the flesh tones and shadows are particulary bad and the transitions from light to dark are jarring. On the plus side…well, no – there are no good things about this one. I regret that my wife spent money to have it framed, honestly.

Following that drawing, I did a few more and then quit for another three years. In June of 2007, I produced this self portrait:

I still hadn’t graduated past cross-hatching with this drawing, but my concept of color and shadow has obviously improved over the first self portrait. The eyes have more life and the skin tones are more realistic, displaying more confidence in the use of blues and greens to indicate cool highlights and shadows (and not having them stand out as oddly placed fields of color). However, it still feels more like a “sketch” or a study than a drawing that took six hours to finish.

The next portrait is a graphite drawing, and I wasn’t sure I should include it in this retrospective since its not the same medium as the others. But, a drawing is a drawing, after all and this one demonstrates more patience with the pencils and an even more refined grasp of playing light and shadow against one another. Its also the best likeness I’d achieved in a self portrait to this point.

And although there is more patience with it, there isn’t quite enough. Portions of the drawing have a rushed or bored quality about them.

Lastly, we have Self Portrait IV, which as I stated in the original post, I feel I “leveled up” on. I was able to see colors and details I had never noticed before, and found myself surprised to be able to translate those details onto the canvas. It was very much like pushing past a mental block – I could almost feel it crumble in my head, if you’ll allow me to be so cliché.

I think the improvements over the last three are self evidant. A year of drawing faces has given me an ability to draw what may not be there but what needs to be and an intimate familiarity with the anatomy of the face and how light plays across its surface. And yet I have so much further to go. When I do the two year retrospective next year, I’ll wager I hate this one. Any takers?

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