Derek – Day 5

I spent some time on details last night. Derek now has a face and a left hand. I also softened up the detail in his lower abdomen. Derek is looking askance over his right shoulder … he’s trying to squint and lift one eyebrow at the same time … while also looking far right. Some more work still has to be done to finish the face and next week (the last week I’ll work on this pose for now) I’ll give him 7 more toes and 4 fingers.

Watercolor – spring class 5

Our model last night was one of the few models in the SVA circuit with a more average body (as opposed to all the dancers and aspiring fashion models who don’t eat enough and have amazing posture), which was quite nice. I did some bold colors in the 5 minute poses that were atrocious, but was able to carry through some of the more intense saturation into my longer poses. The 10 minute pose I’ve put up is drawn kinda funny (she looks like a cartoon), but the painting is decent. The 20 minute came out nicely, but I seem to have misplaced it so there’s no picture. The 60 minute surprised me. It’s got good saturation and decent drawing. I’m pleased with it.

Derek – Day 4

I found my tension last night. Derek isn’t looking straight ahead. That must’ve been something I just wasn’t looking at closely enough before last night. No, he’s looking back over his right shoulder, peering angrily at whatever that thing is that’s sticking him in his hip. So I took care of that last night, as well as giving him feet and hands and eyeballs (temporary ones). In the next two weeks I’ll give him fingers and toes and a real face. Really enjoying this sculpture!

Watercolor – spring class 3

After missing last week, I was glad to get back. And our model was great. He has no body fat and lots of lines, which is my favorite for line drawing, but challening in watercolor. I did some decent drawing last night and used the watercolor medium well, but seem to have taken a step back to the light pale colors of last year, which displeases me. Next week I’m going for full saturation.

Derek – Day 3

Last night during my work on Derek I moved from “well, it looks human” to “ah, it’s coming together.” I lengthened his legs by adding onto the bottom, made his head smaller, and bulked up his back, legs, and arms some more. I’m starting to think about what ways I want to introduce some tension into this pose. There isn’t really any. And the position of his left hand doesn’t make sense. Why would a person stand like that? At this time, I like the back more than the front and hope to work on the front more next week.

casting kent 2

This morning Brett and I put our second day into the kent-casting project. We removed the shims, cleaned up the edges between the sculpture and the rubber wall, and then applied the last (third) piece of the rubber mold. The pictures are in this album – scroll down to where it says “day 2″. Sharp-eyed viewers will notice that his left ear came off during the first layer, and you can see that it has been stuck on again by the second. You may also notice that the first piece of rubber, applied last month, has turned from pink to white. That’s because the pink rubber we used that day was actually NG, and all the steps of the whole first day had to be re-done.

Kent Cast 2

Today i went into tcs in the morning at 9:30 to help Brett with the second step of Kent’s molding and casting process. i didn’t take notes this time, but i’ll try to remember the basics.

so first we pulled out the shims, cutting off overhanging bits of rubber all the while, with an exacto razor. the trick was to pull out the shims slowly and carefully, and hold down the rubber at the same time so that (more…)

Derek – Day 2

Made a lot of progress on Derek last night. The pose changed slightly from last week, and I had to bring his right leg forward a big and change the angle on his hips. The new pose is better. I put a lot more meat on his thighs and worked on his back a lot. Then I put on a head and noticed the the legs are too short. Or is the head just too big? I’m really enjoying being back in a medium that really makes sense to me. An interesting contrast with watercolor.

Watercolor – spring class 2

Last night we had the same model, with very good posture and not much variety of poses. I’m posting three of my attempts from last night. The 5 minute is quite nice, and I would have liked to work on that pose/angle a bit more. In the 20 minute, the drawing/proportions are a bit off (the breasts should be higher up on her body), but with a bit more time I might have been able to fix that. Doing the 60 minute I experimented a little bit, and was rewarded with some muddiness. I also wasn’t quite sure where the nose was and avoided specifying. On the whole, a decent run.