The Romantic Title

by Lisa

  I recently added some brighter strokes of paint to the scarf on this painting. Bill bitched at me the other day for having boring titles to my paintings. Says the title helps sell the painting. I will call this one “The Lavender Veil”. It does sound better than “Barbara with Scarf on Head”.  I expect the inquiries to pour in with Bill heading the charge. The photo is pretty poor quality, but I had to grab it quickly as I also get bitched at if I don’t put a photo of something up with every post. Bill is a real slave driver you guys. My friend Pam asked why we don’t photograph things in the frame. I think that is a good idea myself since work always looks better that way. I think I will try to do that IF (oops) I have a frame that works really well with the piece.

Here is a link to a nice documentary that I think you all will enjoy: http://clicks.robertgenn.com/murals.php . In case anyone thinks I am totally adverse to working from photos, you’re wrong. I am adverse to learning from photos. Photos can provide important source material, and this documentary is a really good example of how well it can work when used by experienced painters.

Painting ~ The Natural Breast

by Bill

 The Saturday morning California Art Institute open session model; sort of.  The model was so quick to undress no one commented on wanting to paint a costumed figure.  Since just about everyone painting seems to do head and shoulders only, I’m not sure of the point of disrobing. 

    The old masters like Neil Boyle and David Jonas are gone now and don’t paint here anymore.  They could do a beautiful full figure in the three hours (often much less time), I can’t.  I usually struggle just to finish a head. 

    This model wanted to do a reclining pose.  I found out why during the session as she fought to stay awake.  Her gaze was straight ahead and her eyes small slits most of the time.  At other times they would briefly open wide then shut completely.  Her mouth was narrow, tight lipped and downturned.  The background was a bright orange drape which I liked on the wall, but looked glaring on my canvas.

    The painting I took home was so bad I was within seconds of tossing it.   I took one more look and decided I liked the modest size and natural sag of her breasts and the look of the small creases in her belly. 

    I know four women who have had implants.  All were married with children and on the outside at least seemed to have normal sized breasts.  When they got their new bosoms they all cinched them up to about  collarbone level.  This made their chests look like the opera singers with iron cones.  They should fix their heads and not their chests.  Do they really want to be admired for the size of their breasts? 

    I changed the background to a darker color and repainted the face.  She now looks at the viewer and has a softer mouth.  I like this painting now.

Paint the Light. Please.

by Lisa

This is the demo I did this week for my class. I am trying to get my students to think more about the light. One student recently told me that she needs to really like what she is painting. I told her that she should perhaps revize that to needing to really like what the light is doing to the subject.  So often students pay no attention to this way way  way important little detail. (Bill tells me I can’t use all caps anymore to emphasize something because it looks like I am yelling. So from now on maybe I’ll just repeat it a bunch of times.) Invariably, students will spend a great deal of time setting a still life up, and never even put a light on the subject until I walk over to them and point this detail out. For this still life, I lit it before I put the subject in there.  All important. I created a little sliver of interesting light hitting the subject.  As I look at it in the small version, I wonder if it couldn’t have been an even smaller sliver of light. I may fix that.