Portrait of Cat Sheridan

I finished this portrait of my friend Cat Sheridan. 17" x 12" in graphite. These are just snapshots of the final drawing and I am going to shoot the photos properly later with better lighting. I did this drawing on Canson mixed media paper. The surface of the paper was softer than bristol board I had been using and once the fiber of the paper got crushed by the pressure of the pencils, it created a surface that was difficult to lay down another layer on. I had to be more careful about the order of the various leads I used as I worked my way through this piece. If I made a mistake of using a pencil that was too hard in the early stage of rendering, it was very difficult to cover up that mistake later on. When I took the source photo for this drawing in the studio 2 years ago, I was not happy with the shape of the lilies she was holding. Luckily I found a photo of another bunch of lilies I had photographed for a different project, so I switched them. When I see the finished drawing, I am glad that I changed the flowers, but I just wish I had made them slightly larger...

Vanitas 3 started

This is a snapshot of a new drawing "Vanitas 3" I started a few weeks ago. I haven't been able to find time to work more on this, so this has been in this underdrawing stage for a while. This is going to be the first 1/2 of a dyptich piece.

 

Vanitas 2 update (8-16-2014)

Working on the black fabric. I am using this masking fluid and it's a great product. It dries fast, it is easy to peel off and doesn't damage the surface. It lifts off the graphite a little but that's not a big deal. I can touch it up fairly easily. This masking fluid along with painter's tape allows me to create really clean edges. A couple of more days of working on the background, then this piece will be finished.

 

Vanitas 2 update (Day 18)

I have finished the figure of Vanitas 2. I struggled with the face a little more than the rest of the body trying to make it look right, and I think I finally got it. Now on to the background.

 

Vanitas 2 Day 6

I have nearly finished the lower half of the figure. The large smooth areas like these legs are a little tricky to render, especially when you are working from photographs. If you didn't carefully look at the subtle value shifts, you could end up with the surface that is not too convincing about its 3-dimensionality. Observing subtle value shifts on the surface of the human body and trying to make sense of them is an intellectual game like solving a puzzle. It gives me a chance to recall what I learned about how all the bones and muscles are connected, and to imagine what they are doing under the skin in this particular situation I am drawing.

I think this drawing is compositionally complex and interesting. It has a semi-bird's eye view of the model. The surface she is lying on is basically a flat tabletop, and yet there is an illusion of exaggerated spatial depth created by the conversing edges of the fabric. Then the perception of the space is optically further distorted by the use of a wide angle lens in shooting. The back edge of the table neatly cuts the picture plane at the 1/3 from the top, creating a flat space in the background that doesn't seem to belong to the rest of the picture and stops our expected spatial perception of the typical one-point perspective. There is a nuanced interplay between flatness and three dimensionality, which, come to think of it, is a recurring visual game I have played many times throughout my work in various mediums.