After Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (colored pencil; 8" x 6")

After Vermeer's" Girl with a Pearl Earring"

Vermeer by Pierre Cabanne; Prismacolor pencils; and my Canson Mi-teintes sketchbook

After Vermeer's "The Milkmaid" (detail)

After Vermeer's "Girl with a Red Hat"

After Vermeer's "Girl with a Flute"

I can't sleep on the airplanes.  Unable to settle into a comfortable position, I keep shifting my body.  My neck, shoulders, and lower back become all knotted up and achy.  I get myself caffeined up to compensate the increasing fatigue.  Both flights for my recent trip to Kauai were long and tedious.  I usually bring a book or two to read.  For this trip, I had something better to while away the time as a captive in a tight space on a noisy plane.

In Lisa Semerad's portrait class last summer, I learned a time-honored technique of using black drawing tools with a white chalk on a toned ground for figure drawing.  Many great masters, such as Da Vinci, Rubens, Watteau, and Degas, had used it in their studies for paintings.  I learn at their feet with reverence, and had spent many hours copying their drawings in the past. 

My teacher for the trip was the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, whose exquisite, domestic interior scenes of the 17th-century-middle-class Delft have captivated art lovers for centuries.  I love his exceptional sense of light and quietude.  A small book by Pierre Cabanne with lots of reproductions of his paintings was the first item I packed for my art survival kit.  I made a small sketchbook with Canson Mi-teintes paper and also equipped myself with several Prismacolor pencils (white, three shades of grays, black and burnt ochre).  These colored pencils are waxy, dust-free, and don't smear. 

Although one can never have loads of fun during an air travel, I still managed to spend several enjoyable hours until I couldn't see anymore with my watery eyes.

"Sarah" (graphite and chalk; 16" x 12")

Today was the last session of Lisa Semerad's figure drawing (short pose) class at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA.  To top off our nine-week forays into the fascinating world of figure drawing, we were assigned to a two-hour-long pose with just a bit of instruction about different kinds of paper and drawing tools.

I chose a warm, mid-toned Canson Mi-teintes paper, since it seemed to match her skin tone fairly closely.  Getting the pose down wasn't hard.  The challenge for me was to get hatching right.  Last week, Lisa showed the different types of hatching--simple, contour, planar, and cross--and told us to practice at home.  Have I done that?  Of course, not. 

And working with white chalk as well as graphite made things really exciting (i.e., confusing).  The paper provides the mid tone; graphite pencils, darks; and white chalk, the highlights.  If you mix graphite and white chalk, you get a disgusting blue gray!  They don't come into contact, excpet where there is an abrupt change of planes from dark to light.

Two hours was a long time for us, a luxury--enough time to get the drawing right, add values, work the environment which the model occupied into the composition, and fiddle.  The model's right knee got a whole lot of white highlights, for instance.  It comes forward too much.  Oh, well.

"Helen" (NuPastel on newsprint; 18" x 24")

A Thursday, another figure drawing.  Today's theme in Lisa Semerad's class was foreshortening.  Look at how short the forearm of the model's right arm appears, compared to the upper arm.  Or the right calf and right thigh, neither of which are quite visible.  Nevertheless, the thigh appears much longer than the calf.  It's all caused by the phenomenon that the true lengths of things in perspective are not what they appear.  We just have to take the leap of faith and draw what we see, not what we know.

Actually I had it really easy with this graceful pose from where I was standing.  That's why Lisa tried to move me to another spot where everything was foreshortened!  I refused although I was flattered by her high estimation of my drawing ability.  By the way, the above pose was one hour long.  Two more classes left before the end of the term.  Am I ready for the figure/portrait painting workshop with Steven Early at the Art League School in early January?  Aargh....

"Katie" (conte crayon on newsprint; 18" x 14")

This fall I have been taking a figure drawing class with Lisa Semerad at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA as part of my figure/portrait self-education program.  Although I pompously said "self-education," there is no substitute for good teachers, books, and models, when it comes down to learning to draw and paint figure/portrait.  So I should have said "self-guided".  My apologies.

Today was the fourth week, with the focus on the head and torso.  The model arrived a little late; then about five minutes into posing, she passed out!  Lisa, an experienced teacher, took it in strides for this sort of thing happens in figure drawing classes once in a while, as tired models rush from one job to another, sometimes with an empty stomach.  The poor model was later struck (gently) by an overhead clamp light, too!  It's fortunate that it was not Friday the 13th, only Thursday the 13th.  I am grateful for the models who pose for really modest monetary compensations.

The above drawings were all ten-minute poses, no time to develop facial features or hands.  The top one was the second of the series and is my favorite.

Portrait Drawing Class with Lisa Semerad II



"Rupert Murdoch" (pencil and white chalk on scrap booking paper)

Drawing of a mouth (Nupastel on paper)

Lisa doing a demo of noses

My turn at noses (pencil on paper)

Eyes (pencil and white chalk on Canson Mi-teintes paper)

The portrait drawing class with Lisa Semerad at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA is over.  It went so fast that everything is all blurry.  One day we were learning to draw mouths, then in the next class, noses;  on Thursday, Lisa taught us what to do with teeth, eyes, and ears, and turned us out of the classroom!  I think this is definitely the case of "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing."  She told the class to avoid art books that promise "tricks" of doing this and that easily.  There are no tricks in art, just good old practice.  Yes, ma'am!

I loved the technique of graphite pencil and white chalk drawing on toned paper that she showed us in the last class so much that, while I was watching TV last night, I did a drawing of Rupert Murdoch, who is embroiled in scandals in Britain for his News Corporation's nefarious phone-tapping, police-bribing deals.  His haughty, disdainful expression is something else, don't you think?  The choice of gray art paper with random Alphabet letters was serendipitous.

Portrait Drawing Class with Lisa Semerad I

"Male Head" (graphite)

This summer I started my own portrait/figure drawing program at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA, not to become a portrait painter, but to become a better painter.  The first class I chose is Lisa Semerad 's portrait drawing class.  I took the same class long time ago; I don't remember how much I learned at that time.  Now I am soaking up Lisa's instructions like a sponge, perhaps because I have since become a better artist.

The class runs for four weeks; we meet twice a week for three hours each.  We are now into the third week.  The first two drawings from cast heads were done Tuesday last week.  We were supposed to go through 20 steps mentally each time we worked on a drawing, starting with an eggy oval shape all the way to simple horizontal/vertical planes for light/dark patterns.  I kept messing up the steps out of panic!  Lisa never gives enough time!

"Female Head" (graphite)

Last Thursday we moved on to Conte crayons with the focus on different head shapes.  We modeled, taking turns--lots of fun!  (No, we didn't pose naked.)   I titled the following two drawings "Cleopatra" and "Chinese Empress," inspired by the noble demeanor of the African-American and Asian fellow students.

"Cleopatra" (conte crayon)

"Chinese Empress" (conte crayon)

Yesterday's lesson was blocking (or modeling).  After toning the paper with pastel, we lightly established the shapes within the head.  With a kneaded eraser, we then  restored the light shapes.  We continued to refine features, with an ever light touch.  Finally, we introduced white chalk and darker color pastel to give the drawing more definition and punch.  As I joked in class, watching Lisa doing a 30-minute demo had given us a false sense of confidence; boy, it was hard to manipulate a kneaded eraser or use a darker color without messing up!  

Lisa Semerad doing a demo

"Male Head in Terracotta" (Nupastel)

"Female Head in Blue" (Nupastel)

"Black Tulip Dress" (oil pastel on paper; 20" x 14") sold

sold

An unused box of oil pastels I had bought several years ago bugged the miser in me to do something about it, so this weekend I took a workshop with Lisa Semerad at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA.  Oil pastel is waxy pastel that doesn't behave like the traditional chalk pastel at all.  It doesn't produce dust for one thing.  Art is great, but with cadmiums in some paints, who wants to breathe in toxic stuff and die young? 

It's gooey, tactile, and versatile.  You can combine this nifty medium with oil, acrylic, watercolor, and colored pencil; you can paint on paper, canvas, metal, glass, plastic, or whatever!  If Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had had these babies, he would have created an even wilder oeuvre.

There were ten students in the workshop, and we shared the attitude of fun, experiment, and childlike fearlessness.  Since we didn't have much experience with the medium and didn't burden ourselves with the expectation to create masterpieces at the end of the day, we didn't get frustrated and remained thoroughly cheerful.  Guess what!  We did make some good art!  Look at "Black Tulip Dress".  Does it look like my usual artwork?  When I thought I had been really brave, Lisa came around to ask if I was ready for some crazy stuff.  Gasp.  I said "sure."  She began to scratch with a couple of colored pencils all  over the paper!  I continued the wild act and signed my name.  What a weekend!