J Dunster Art Blog – Oil Painting, Portraits, and Cats
Figurative art, oil & acrylic painting, figure drawing, and cat portraits
I thought I’d write a little bit about a common tool used by artists: A digital tablet.
Many artists report that tablets are superior for displaying reference photos. Tablets are not limited by the resolution of a print on paper. You can zoom in on an image to see far more detail. The colors are often more accurate and with a wider range. Continue reading “Working with a tablet; FABULOUSLY ORANGE cat head”
After a regrettably long hiatus, I am back with a new cat head painting! And for the New Year!
Circumstances in life prevented me from getting into my studio to paint for the past several months. I tried to compensate for that by doing some drawings at home. (More on that later.) But now I am back, and am working on some new paintings! This little cat head is the first to be completed. I especially was trying to capture the fluffiness of this kitty with soft brush strokes and lost edges. Also, warm and cool temperatures were used to show depth (I hope).
With this painting I also attempted to go looser! It was fun!
Words cannot express how much I missed painting, and how WONDERFUL it felt to be back to it!
But, I did do some fun pencil work, and below is my latest piece. It probably needs some more tweaking. It’s simple graphite pencil (0.05mm mechanical pencil, HB lead) on smooth paper.
I’m a BIIIIIG fan of crosshatching. Continue reading “Back again, Back again, Happy New Year!”
A break from my usual paintings of portraits and cat heads! There is a “tutorials” category in this blog, and today I am using it!
I have a painting student who is interested in working more with life drawing and figure drawing. I told her that I’d make a blog post with some book recommendations and other basic tips. This is that blog post! (Book recommendations are at the bottom of this page.)
A topic we’ve been discussing is that all-too-common bugaboo for many artists—getting basic figure proportions correct. Working from life or working from photos, it can get tricky.
It’s a common error for artists to make the head too big for the figure. I remember doing this when I took my first life drawing class. All my figures looked like horrible trolls with HUGE heads! It took a while to finally overcome this bad habit.
This is often happens because we emotionally “see” the head as the most important and unconsciously make it bigger. (We do the same when drawing faces, too. The features will be too big for the rest of the head, and new artists often make the forehead too short and the back of the head too shallow, because we focus so much on the features–eyes, nose, mouth—that the rest of the head is subconsciously viewed as “less important” and drawn smaller.)
To combat this common problem, and to aid all artists in getting the proportions correct, many art teachers have been teaching the “heads high” proportion standard.
The conventional wisdom is that most people are “7-1/2 heads” high. Continue reading “TUTORIAL: Figure drawing, book recommendations, proportions”
I loved Rapidographs at art school. I didn’t “get” pen and ink at first, always having worked in pencil when I was a teenager and before going to Otis. But they were really stressing ink in the Illustration classes, so I wanted to learn. Continue reading “Blast from the past—Rapidographs!”
I haven’t posted a figure sketch in a very long time, so tonight’s the night. I was working on a painting (agonizing, is more like it) and it’s just not going to be done tonight. So the heck with it! Here’s a figure drawing instead. Continue reading “Quick Nude Sketch (NSFW, obviously)”
I’m loving this new portrait drawing group! We meet weekly (won’t meet next week due to the holiday, alas). Each week we get a volunteer model to pose for us—three 20-minute poses. We are a diverse group, and use a variety of mediums—oils, acrylics, watercolors, pastels, charcoal, and good old pencil. I’m doing pencil so far, but hope to drag my oils in soon! I rarely get a chance to do a “long” (one hour being relatively so) pose.
Here’s this week’s offering:
Karen was a wonderful model, very patient with us! She said it was hard to keep a smile on her face (we all understand how that is!) and so her expression ended up being more somber. She wore a lovely and colorful print dress, which I didn’t bother to capture since I was just drawing in pencil.
I just started attending this art group that meets once a week (more or less) and draws or paints a volunteer model. It’s a wonderful group of people and allows us all to get some valuable practice from life!
I often harp on how important drawing from life is. Photos don’t capture things the way they really are—not quite. I don’t mind using photo references, I won’t be ashamed of using them, but at the same time I realize how important drawing from life is!
I hope to bring my paints to one of these sessions, as other artists have. We have an hour of model time (one pose) so that should be enough time to do something!
Very, very excited about this.
Last week’s model was “Marisol” who came with her adorable little dog, who was a rescue. The dog was nervous but at the same time, a great model! As was Marisol. I used the first two 20-minute pose sessions to draw Marisol, then used the last 20-minute pose to draw her and the dog. Here are the results:
Time again to post some latest Life Drawing efforts.
I had two evenings of figure drawing (each night at a different place) this week. Both nights, I sucked. Oh well, it’s been a while since I was able to attend figure drawing. And next week I hopefully will be able to attend a portrait drawing group, where artists meet to do portraits only from life! I am looking forward to that.
Drawing from life is an ongoing thing. For many artists it is. We keep coming back to do it again, and again, and again. We don’t outgrow it, and we shouldn’t! Without that regular drawing practice, we get rusty (like I’ve been getting lately) and that’s bad. Don’t ever believe that you’ve had “enough” life drawing because you took a semester or two of it in college.
Anyway, here’s what I’ve got to show this time.
The one above was done a few months ago. I never got around to posting it, until now. And the one below, same thing. Done a few months ago, didn’t get around to scanning it or posting it.
Below is the only sketch produced this week. I cropped the drawing to just show her head. The rest of the sketch didn’t turn out so great.
Time for more figure drawings! For a very long time, ever since I took my first figure drawing class at age 18, I’ve kept returning to life drawing classes and sessions. This kind of drawing discipline helps keep skills sharp. You have to draw the model in front of you—no time for lots of erasing and fussing, as the model won’t stay still forever!
And here are a few more sketches from a nude model. These sketches are usually done from 15-30-minute poses. Never longer than 30 minutes.
The above sketch is available for sale on DailyPaintworks.
And yet another!
When I went to art school (Otis in Los Angeles) many moons ago, I knew I needed to get better at figure drawing. I had already taken several semesters at the local Community College (Glendale College, aka GCC) and had a wonderful teacher there. But after a while, I’d exhausted all my possible semesters of life drawing and it was time to move on.
I happened to see an ad in the L.A. Times for this art school, called Otis. I had never heard of it before, but I sent away for a catalog. And when I got the catalog, I knew that it was where I wanted to go. (I also considered Art Center in Pasadena, but it was a no-go, because it would have been too difficult to get there by bus. So, that’s how I made my decision for Otis. Bus routes.)
Anyway, I had some semesters of wonderful classes there, which showed me more about anatomy and figure drawing and I was doing okay, and improving. Then one semester, the new schedule came out and among the figure drawing classes listed, was one taught by . . . Burne Hogarth.
No, that’s not good enough—just typing it out like that—that doesn’t have enough gravity. BURNE FRIGGING HOGARTH.
There.
Cropped page from my sketchbook. Class notes from Mr. Hogarth’s class. Click on image to see the full page.
Oh my goodness. I think I shrieked right there in class (wherever I was) and made a complete scene in front of everyone, pretty much babbling, “BURNE HOGARTH! BURNE HOGARTH!!!” over and over again. Several other students wondered what my problem was, and then I explained, between excited shrieks, that this guy has written one of the best instructional books on figure drawing and anatomy and I had studied his books from cover to cover and they rocked my world. And now he was going to teach there. At Otis! Sign me up!
Several of the other students who heard me shriek about Hogarth signed up for his class too, just based on my reaction. They later told me that they were soooo glad that they did.
Cropped page from my sketchbook. Class notes from Mr. Hogarth’s class. Click on image to see the full page.
Mr. Hogarth (as we all called him) was a wonderful teacher, very old school. Always full of information and ideas. He’d draw these biiig drawings on an easel at the front of the class and lecture on whatever part of the anatomy he was covering that week. It was amazing to watch him work.
He attracted some very advanced students. There was an art teacher from one of the Cal States (who was already a fantastic artist) who asked everyone to not mention to Mr. Hogarth that he was a teacher too; he was just there to learn from the Great Hogarth. There were some illustrators, comic book artists, and a guy from Disney as well. Some really amazing people. And some “regular” students, like me! It was such a fun class and I know it helped me improve my skills a lot. I was lucky to have a couple of semesters with him. I’ll never forget.