Aime-Jules Dalou

I was drawing at the National Gallery of Art yesterday — practicing figurative drawing for the regular life class I attend — and made this drawing after Jules Dalou’s portrait of Alphonse Legros.  I suppose they had an idea about hair — as an expressive feature — that really gets exploited in 19th century art.  In Alphonse Legros’s own self-portrait (see below) he seems to have somewhat less dramatic hair than that with which Dalou portrays him.

While I was drawing the sculpture, I got very caught up in the features of Legros’s magnificent, fictional, lionesque mane.  My drawing is inside a 9 1/2 by 6 1/4 inch Stillman and Birn notebook.  I also made a slightly larger drawing on Strathmore drawing paper (not pictured).  And I’m eager to get back to the museum soon and make some more drawings after the sculpture — because — the hair!

Here’s a photo of the sculpture on NGA’s website — different angle — but it’s a link to an image that you can zoom into if you’re so inclined ….

https://www.nga.gov/Collection/art-object-page.43644.html

At first I thought the bust was by Rodin because the room is full of Rodin sculptures of various sorts and sizes.  I had never heard of Dalou before, but now I learn that he was an amazing sculptor with a quite expansive, varied oeuvre.

And while looking for information about the National Gallery’s Rodins, I happened upon a fabulous Rodin drawing that NGA owns.  The link below also has a zoom feature.  So, I’m thinking about this kind of drawing too as inspiration for life class.  How freely Rodin approached the figure, but of course his freedom is built on tons of knowledge.  Here’s the link to the drawing:

https://www.nga.gov/Collection/art-object-page.1032.html

So many things to see, so many things to draw, ain’t life grand?!

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Intense

For the last three weeks I’ve been attending a life class that meets at the historic Arts Club.  As I get back into the habit of drawing from a model, I’m thinking about different ways to focus the experience.  Last session, though, I had no particular plan and I ended up drawing very fast, and it was a wonderful session.  The model was lit by a bright studio light in the front and by cool outdoor light in the back.  The outdoor light brightened as the session lengthened and I had the opportunity to observe some fabulous color effects.

I’ve approached each session so far a bit differently.  And that makes sense given the differences in the models and the set up.  But I think I’m developing a plan for what I want to achieve from life drawing.  So next session might be a little more structured — for me — in terms of what I draw, what materials I use, and so on.

New thing.  Always got to keep shaking loose the ideas.  Drawing the figure is utterly different from what I’m pursuing in my regular work, so the class offers a chance to change gears.

But last session was intense.  I just drew.  Not much thinking about it.  Indeed, for some reason I felt that I had to draw as fast as I can.  So it was a bit of a race.  And when it was over I was suitably tired!  That’s a great feeling.  I could tell that the model was getting tired as well.  When he was most tired, he got a fierce look on his face that was marvelous to behold which I tried to capture.  I think he was striving to hold still as his muscles were getting fatigued from the stillness.  And that strife in his face …!

Well, you can’t tire someone out on purpose so just take the images that the moment gives you and draw them as well as you can!

between drawing & painting

A few weeks ago in September I went to the Botanic Gardens to draw with a Meetup group.  I decided to use some Sennelier oil pastels that I have — just because — and it turned out to be rather a challenge.  Sennelier oil pastels, as you may know, are expensive and lip-stick like (when new) and corrosive to the paper (eventually) because of the oil in them.  I used them on Arches oil paper, and since mine are not new, rather than being lip-stick like, they were just sticky.  I knew then that precision was not the effect to seek and so I bashed the color around.  And it’s kind of pretty if somewhat incoherent.

For a second drawing, I used Neopastels (Caran d’Ache) which I love.  Not much detail or evident precision in this drawing either but by the time I began it I had been standing rather a longish time, balancing my box of pastels under the drawing itself, a very ungainly way to work!  The flowers are composed of little flowerets that cascade across in a ball.  I got the ball quality, but not the parts.  Still, not bad to get some if not all of the complex perception.

The gooey Sennelier drawing sits inside the closed Arches oil paper tablet.  The Neopastel sits propped against furniture on the studio floor where I can see it as I work. (I’m working on a largish painting of a moth at the moment).   Seeing it there it has begun to affect me with its bright colors.  And even though the kind of flower portrayed isn’t even evident from the drawing, I find myself wanting to go back to Botanic gardens and make more incoherent drawings like these.  And I’m wondering if I could make a whole incoherent painting of them, one made exclusively from drawings.

So, we’ll see.  But for now, I’m all moth.

Here’s a detail of the gooey Sennelier where you can see the texture available. It’s a very expressive material for a certain kind of work.  I wasn’t quite in the mood for it that day I used it, but its appeal sneaks up on you later on after the work is done ….

The color relationships are not unlike those of the flower painting I made recently, which is now on the wall at the Virginia Art League during the month of October.

 

a happy chaos of flowers

I have been painting a lot lately so much that I haven’t had time to blog about it.  And nearly all of the paintings depict flowers.  The painting above measures 30 x 40 inches.  After having painted so many flowers in vases on tables, I wanted to do something amorphous.  The theme of amorphous arrangements is one that I’m just beginning to explore, and there will be others besides the one above.  Indeed there’s an even larger painting in the works.

I still paint the flowers on table tops, of course, and one of the recent pictures is a traditional still life because I love the flat receding plane of the table top with its still life theatre.

Long time readers know that I like to paint pictures of koi swimming and this still life has a fish component, so that was fun.  The painting above measures 16 x 20 inch inches so it’s small, but it’s got attitude.  And what’s particularly new about these paintings is that I painted them using acrylic paint which I haven’t used in a long time.  I have had such a blast using this fast drying paint.  Each kind of artist material has its own peculiar charms and I like to range among the opportunities.  I think particularly now that using acrylic paint is going to teach me things that I can afterwards apply profitably in oil painting.

The fish pattern paper featured in the second painting comes from a wonderful store in Old Town Alexandria called The Paper Source.  It will be fun showing the store’s staff what I did with the beautiful deep blue paper I bought there — the first of the paper’s soon-to-be frequent appearances in my art.

My flower mélange is partly inspired by the store window of Caruso’s Florist at 17th and M Streets in Washington Dc where there’s a dramatic window display.  I was walking in the evening in mid-September, strolling around the block a couple times because I was early for a meeting.  That’s when I came upon Caruso’s store window.  It was one of those great felicitous accidents of happening upon something that you had been hoping to find!  When I returned to the store the next day with my camera, the store’s owner greeted me.  He is just about the nicest guy you’re likely to ever meet.  So, if you visit Washington DC and want to meet somebody delightful, make a straight path for Caruso’s Florist.

I have a lot of project ideas right now.  Some of them are underway, others are just buzzing about in my brain.  It’s been a very exciting time of full days.

In other news if you received one of the cards with a reproduction of my paintings and are a new visitor to the blog, welcome.  Hope you find many things to enjoy.