Painting Nudes 2017

The Third Workshop Semester 2 with David Chen

The topic for this workshop was controlling tone. In a tonal painting you decide if you want to complete a dark, medium or light toned painting, you also decide on the temperature of your colours, which can be either overall warm or cool. The overall colour of the painting is decided as well.

So what you may decide on, depending on your preferences and taste as a painter could be an overall tonal painting that is in the cool reds and a middle to dark tone, to create some richness and drama.

Painting Nudes Semester 2-2017

The First of Five Workshops with David Chen

Last semester ended with us understanding more about skin tones and how to use edges, tone and colour to place the model into a scene.

This semester we began by going over David’s philosophy for the workshops and his experience as first, an art student learning Academic Art Training at university (something that is not widely covered in Australia) and later as a practising artist and art teacher.

The technical issues that David has overcome during his 40 years as an artist and teacher are invaluable for students to learn as we take on the difficult subject of the human body.

Painting Nudes 2017

The Final of Five Workshops with David Chen

During this workshop, we learnt about another method of working the model into their surroundings. Rather than having your subject, be it a human figure or even a still life or an animal, looking like they are part of their surrounds, and keeping the painting interesting takes planning and often altering what you see to what you want. During this workshop, we could either take from the objects surrounding the model and apply our imagination to make them work, or use vignetting (leaving areas of the canvas white) to merge parts of the model into the background and surrounds.

Painting Nudes 2017

The Fourth of Five Workshops with David Chen

This workshop followed on fromthe previous subject about “loosening up” your painting style. One thing that I have noticed over recent years is how edges can make or break a painting. The softer and “looser” result that you may be looking for has to do with how you approach painting edges, particualrly those on you main subject in relation to the surrounding composition.

There are a few different methods to help with creating interesting edges that also bind your subject to their surroundings, rather than having them look like cardboard cutouts.

Painting Nudes 2017

The Third of Five Workshops with David Chen

When I began training with David Chen, my goal was to not only learn the principles of Modern Impressionist painting, but also to ‘loosen up’ my style a bit from what i saw as sometimes ‘stiff’ and contrived results. Sometimes the details become so important that I forgot to place the subject within and connected to the foreground and background in which it was situated.

Context is just as important as your focus and main subject, and when the subject began to look disjointed, unrelated or worse, like it has been stuck or pasted on top of an unrelated scene, is when I start wondering how this could have been avoided. My thought was that if I could put more planning and less effort into my paintings, that would be a start, but what kind of thought and what kind of effort?

Life Drawing – Using Light

Venue: Frankston Chisholm

Tutor: Bill Hay

 

The way we light the model for life drawing makes a huge difference. Like portrait drawing and painting, the light and shadow creates drama, and helps to form the contours of the body.

Famous artists have used dramatic lighting to create some of the most impressive portraits and nude studies in art history. Two examples of lighting used to its best are by artists Vermeer and Rembrandt. Vermeer used light through windows, seatng or standing his models so that the light cast strong highlights on to them. Rembrandt painted haunting portraits by keeping one side of the face in shadow and in the case of his self portraits, placing a dark background around the face.

(NOTE: Drawings of nude male figure follow in this article)

Life Drawing – Tone and Light

Venue: Frankston Chisholm

Tutor: Bill Hay

 

Creating form when drawing the body is mostly done by using the light source and tonal qualities created by light and shadow.

For this session, we started with some usual line drawings and then advanced on to creating a tone over the surface of the paper to draw into and then erase for highlights. If you have never tried this method before, it is a quick way to create interesting drawings that have more than just lines to depict the curves and proportions of the human body.

(NOTE: Drawing of nude female figure follows in this article)

Life Drawing and Collaborative Projects

Venue: Frankston Chisholm

Tutor: Bill Hay

One of the advantages and pleasures of being in a classroom situation is having the opportunity to do a collaborative work with other students. Often you don’t know how it will all turn out until you put up the finished piece and have a chance to stand back and look at it.

For this session, our tutor had set up a large sheet of brown craft card on the floor, and as we completed poses of our model, he selected a variety of them, to make up a narrative of the lesson.

For those that may have read the classics, like The Illiad, The Odyssey or The Aeneid, the poses and story that we ended up telling on paper, looked to me, very much like an epic tale just like one of these.

(NOTE: Drawings of nude male figure follow in this article)

Life Drawing with Inks and Pastels

Venue: Frankston Chisholm

Tutor: Bill Hay

As we advance through this terms of Life Drawing, additional materials are being added to improve overall drawing skill. During this session we began with short 2-minute sketches with inks on white paper. This gets the eye and hand co-ordination working ready for the longer poses.

Short poses for many, are stressful, as too much detail is sought, rather than capturing the essential pose of the model. Quick poses are an opportunity to look at where the weight bearing is happening, the movement, the general feeling of the pose and not all the little details. I encourage students in drawing classes to relax and enjoy this process more as it is an important part of your progress towards your more involved drawings later in a session.

These sort simple drawings also prepare you for adding and changing materials as you work your way through learning about your model, how their body differs from others, and how you can interpret what you are seeing to paper.

(NOTE: Drawings of nude male figure follows in this article)

Life Drawing and Painting

 Tutor: David Chen

An important thing to remember when drawing or painting the human figure is to look at the overall shape created by the body and the pose. The positive and negative shapes in and around the body are an important compositional element in your artwork. Understanding how to make these work together is important.

(NOTE: Drawings of nude female figures follow in this article)