"Mandarin Oranges in Silver Bowl" (watercolor on paper; 11" x 10")

 

"Mandarin Oranges in Silver Bowl"

The following is the description of what we did in the sixth week of the winter term, 2022 for my "Watercolor from Start to Finish" class (my online Zoom class with the Art League School in Alexandria, VA).

Yesterday I talked a lot to inspire you into doing more art and especially more drawing everyday. Bert Dodson's Keys to Drawing is an invaluable drawing resource any aspiring artist should have in her or his bookshelf and do exercises from daily. The fountain pen with waterproof ink (instead of Micron pens) I use when I am traveling or at home is the Platinum Carbon Ink Desk Fountain Pen. It has an extra fine line; the one I have been using for several years extensively shows no wear; I have two (one with black ink and the other, brown).

The brush pen I showed is the Pentel Arts Pocket Brush Pen. There are many similar brush pens in the market and this one is IT. It has a steep learning curve and not everyone's cup of tea. At the end of the day, all you need for drawing practice is a sketchbook and a pencil!

I am not sharing any links for watercolor sketchbooks. There are too many out there to bother and it's a personal choice. You gotta go through several until you find your favorite. And please finish all your sketchbooks so that you can brag about it (very few people do)!

I also talked about drawing in perspective with the aid of a ruler, which is not necessary but I bet opened your eyes. Some of your drawings were definitely wonky. Although I said a wonky drawing is preferable to a sleek, traced drawing, it doesn't mean you have to live with wonky drawings for the rest of your life. Nobody is born with the gift to draw beautifully. Even the great masters practiced incessantly.

After the light pencil drawing was done (erase the construction lines if you have any), we did the line work over with a dip pen and black India ink. This is when I "redraw" where I see drawing errors. Yes, you can draw without the prior pencil drawing. It's a nerve-wrecking, yet exhilarating experience. You have no idea how risky and dangerous an artist's daily life is! You don't have to be a snowboarder. Lol.

You can apply a slight pressure where you want an emphasis (this is called a varied light weight in art lingo). Be careful with this, otherwise you end up with a sprung pen (permanently ruined!). India ink also has a steep learning curve. Just because you felt awkward using the dip pen and ink first time, don't give upon them. Practice!

In the pen and wash technique, the pen line does at least 60% of the work, so the wash (watercolor part) goes fast with minimum fuss. That's why this technique is so popular among travel-journal artists. It has a bit of illustration feel and perhaps that's why so many illustrators use it (or is it the other way around)?

I am not going to tell you what colors I used for that reason. Keep colors of the mandarin oranges bright and glowing (don't forget the alizarin crimson core shadows though)! This glowing illusion comes from leaving the highlights pure white by painting around! (You can do that with the leaves or silver bowl or anything shiny you feel like painting). The darks were the usual mixture of ultramarine blue and crimson. For the silver bowl, I used cobalt blue as the base color and added different paints as fit.

Try to paint the shadow (luminous and beautiful purple, and not dirty-looking; remember overmixing results in dirty colors and it's the curse to the watercolorist) when the base of the bowl is still wet. Your painting should have a flowing look, not a disjointed and disharmonious one. That's why I often start painting the object B right next when the object A is still wet so that watercolor will bleed (yes, definitely nerve-wrecking).

Below is the image of the demo. In the demo, I didn't do any glazing because I ran out of time. It doesn't mean you shouldn't either. When the painting is "finished", assess the situation and do some glazing if deemed necessary. Remember that too many beginners and no-longer-beginners announce their paintings finished too soon! 

 

"Mandarin Oranges in Silver Bowl Class Demo"

 

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)