An interesting little story behind this painting.
I had a simultaneously fun, exhausting, and crazy evening (and night, and morning!) at the studio yesterday. I was visiting with a fellow artist, we were yakking about art, doing some painting, just having fun, and some circumstances were created which made it necessary for us to both stay overnight at the studio. (It’s a long story. Suffice it to say, drama follows this artist wherever she goes! LOL!) It was totally unplanned.
So what do we do? After getting some salads at a nearby grocery store as our (very) late dinner, we stayed up all night. We spent our time looking at art on the Internet, painting, talking about art, looking at more art on the Internet, did some more painting, lather, rinse, repeat, until it was about noon the next day.
But, hey! It was fun!
Anyway, this plaster cast study was borne out of our overnight studio session.
As we were whiling away the wee hours, we wondered, what do we paint? What reference photos do we use? Can we both share the same iPad (I use an iPad to display my reference paintings as I work)? Then my plaster cast “Roman Youth” (available here, among other places), propped up against a wall in the studio, caught my eye. I’ve had this plaster cast (commonly referred to as “THE HEAD”) for over a year, keep on meaning to paint from it, but never have. Why not now?
So we did! And it was a great experience. Of course there was the complication of THE HEAD slipping from its position, slowly, almost imperceptibly, so while we worked it would change position just a tiny bit. Ah, the joys of working from life!
But that was the fun part of it. Working from life. I try to do it as much as I can, but it’s not always possible. Working from THE HEAD was a wonderful experience. THE HEAD was reflecting warm and cool light and it was a fascinating challenge to try to capture that. A great learning experience for my artist friend and myself.
The resulting painting is not perfect by any means, but it’s a testament to a crazy, all-nighter painting session, and for that reason I am proud of it! I’m vowing to do more studies using THE HEAD.
