My journey so far

It is has been almost 2 years since I moved to India. I left San Francisco in 2014 and traveled the world with my husband for almost 1.5 years. We each wanted to find out what we were good at. I finally found my passion — arts. However, I also learned that keeping up with your passion is a difficult thing. It’s not easy to be motivated every day. Moving to a whole new country and starting it all from ground zero is a whole new ballgame. It is quite difficult. So here’s my journey so far.

When I moved to India, I was extremely thrilled and promised myself that I will paint or draw every day. The initial months were awesome. I always found new subjects to paint from and ideas to explore. I was super excited to wake up every day and paint. I made a painting a day and took progress shots and posted it on social media. I got kudos from my friends and likes from people I did not know. I was happy and carefree.

However, as time passed, I started finding it very difficult to continue painting each day. I was getting accustomed to my new location and was unable to find a flourishing art ecosystem. There were no art meet-ups or conferences that focused on contemporary artists who wanted to paint from live models or places where artists could just go to see other artist paint. I also couldn’t find artist grade art supplies and materials, which were so easily available in San Francisco. Slowly I grew frustrated and my painting hours reduced. New ideas started dying and I couldn’t even pick up my brush to paint something simple. I started making excuses for the day and stopped painting altogether. However, I was still not comfortable. There was this lingering feeling of doing something about it because I was still in love with arts and I wanted to find my way back.

What got me started again was something simple. I decided I would restrict my posts on social media and would just spend my time learning from the artists I admired. I picked up one of my favorite artist “Richard Schmid’s” book on Alla prima and spent a few days just reading and understanding it. I knew many artists who admired his books but I never understood why until I read it a few times. It was brilliantly written and gave me the much-needed boost that I was missing. I started copying his work and now spent hours painting. I don’t post on social media as regularly as I did and I am pretty happy about it.

Here’s a sneak peak into what I learned:

Portrait in oil. Image courtesy: onairvideo.com

My copy of Richard Schmid’s painting “The Professor”

Painting Elsa Day 3

Yesterday for the last day for painting Elsa. Here’s what I was able to achieve

"Elsa Day 3"

I checked my eyes to nose triangle and found that I had painted the nose long. So i redid the nose and as a result moved the mouth and the neck.

Overall a great learning. Next time I should check the eye-nose-mouth location in my drawing stage.

Painting Elsa Day 1 and 2

Repost: https://www.shuchimuley.com/single-post/2017/12/09/Painting-Elsa-Day-1-and-2

In one of the many long pose sessions at studio — Basic Enquiry, I started painting a portrait of our amazing model Elsa. Here’s my process — -

Stage 1: Setup

First, I arrange my stuff. Here’s what I use — oil paints, board/panel for painting, Gamsol, brushes, medium(1/3rd stand oil, 1/3rd linseed oil, 1/3rd Gamsol) and kitchen tissue roll.

I paint on boards that are primed. In case they aren’t primed I coat them either with acrylic gesso or oil grounds. The pre-primed ones I use are from Ampersand and I love them!

Here’s a link for Blick in case you want to buy:

https://www.dickblick.com/products/ampersand-gessobord/

Stage 2: Drawing

I always start by making random marks on my canvas using a mix of Terra Rosa, Viridian and some Gamsol (Odorless Mineral Turpentine). This is just to make a mark on the board. Why do I do it? I don’t know, maybe coz I saw many good artists starting that way and I thought it was fun. :) It also helps me in knowing how absorbent the surface is.

Next, I take some Terra Rosa and start marking in the structure of my portrait. I make lines for where the head will be and also the neck (I always make some portion of the neck). Then, I put in marks for various landmarks such as the eye socket, tip of the nose, mouth accent, chin, pit of the neck, and so on.

I draw directly on the board and make edits using Gamsol. I shift my eyes between looking at the model and my board and also mass in the shadow at this stage.

Stage 3: Color

Now I start painting in the eyes, one at a time.

Palette next to my panel

I clip my palette next to my panel because it helps in making better color decisions. I also look for temperature changes and compare each color that I apply with my previous color patches. I  also look at the anatomy of the head and check to see if I have painted them in the right place such as the eyes to nose triangle, the location of the ear, the distance from the forehead to the eyebrow to the tip of the nose to the accent of the mouth to the chin. 

"Elsa in progress shot"

I paint from left to right starting from the light to the shadow. Many artists paint from shadow to light but I still have to try that.

I also painted the background, which I usually do much earlier in the process. It helps fix issues with the form next to it. It is always a good practice to put the colors next to each other and the background early in the painting stage. You should not add the background later since it creates a hard edge when the paint gets dry. Also, remember that with these color choices and temperature changes you are turning the form!

After 3 hours it was time to wrap-up until next Monday, which will be the last session for this pose. I carried my oil painting in my newly created wet-painting carrier.

"Wet-painting carrier that I create"

"My painting in the carrier"

Art course in Paris (2014)→ Week 3

This week was all about tonality, i.e. how dark and light things are. For this we learnt more about action of light and how it helps in revealing nature’s designs. Light changes the way we see a form. It creates dark areas, light areas and reflections.

To know how light or dark an area is we examine its:

1. Planar orientation — planar orientation of a form is useful in knowing which planes would be lit more than the others
2. Proximity to light — by knowing how close or far we are from the source of light we can determine the degree of brightness or darkness.

Let us examine that using a sphere

For a sphere, the value progression from terminator line to the brightest bright is the same in all directions and it changes at a constant rate. Unlike a sphere, the planes on a body do not all receive equal light. Even the value progression is not constant.

Next were reflected light and highlight planes. Highlight plane changes with our line of sight because it is with respect to a viewer.

Next week, we studied more about the modeling of a form.

Art course in Paris (2014)→ Week 4

"Drawing by Timothy Stotz"

Last week we studied tonality using a sphere. This week was about modeling a form. Our body is not a sphere and has lot of irregular shapes. Tim taught us how to think about broad forms for shadows and to look for terminators. The value for each part has to be compared to the value of another form, i.e. we learnt to observe how dark or light one form was compared to other.

We start by looking for planar division of masses and then planar division of shadows. Look for cast shadow, and form shadow. Shadows always cut across a form and are defined by irregular structures. He asked us to go slow and to stay organized.

Steps for creating shadows:

1. First, check the overall angle for the shadow and draw a straight line
2. Next, look for irregularities and draw them
3. Then, look for small local shadows
4. Lastly, cross hash the shadow area. Keep the value scale of the entire drawing in mind while shading.

Tip: Start with the central part of a figure

Art course in Paris (2014)→ Week 5 and 6

Last two weeks were all about drawing hands and feet. We learnt about how to break a big form into small chunks. Also learnt about tonality of the form.

Here are some of my drawings of hands

"Hand drawing 1"

"Hand drawing 2"

"Hand drawing 3"

"Hand drawing 4"

"Hand drawing 5"

"Hand drawing 6"

And here are my final week figure drawings:

"Sketches from Live model (on the left) and at the Louvre (on the right)"

Art course in Paris (2014)→ Week 1

I was super excited about the first day of the class. I reached the studio on time to meet my new art teachers — Timothy and Michelle. They were super nice and greeted me right at the entrance. There were people from different countries — Australia, United States, Belgium, Canada and France — who had travelled all the way for the class. Some students were returning for the fourth time. As we spoke talked about our experiences over wine and beer, I felt I belonged here.

Next day on we started drawing. We spent our mornings drawing at the studio and our afternoons practicing at the Louvre. Tim and Michelle asked us to first draw the figure using the techniques we knew and then later gave personal critiques to every body. My figure drawing on day 1 was hilarious and I made the most common mistake that everyone makes — starting from top of the page and running out of space at the end. It was difficult for me to draw figures as I didn’t know how.

Then Tim taught us a new technique for figure drawing that describes overall gesture of the figure. They called it inner movement curves. We start with drawing a line from the crown of the head down the center line of the face passing further down to tip of the toe. The next line travels from the top of the head, wrapping around the body in the opposite direction and down to the toe of another leg. Third one is for the arms. We started with 5 min poses and drew the three curvy lines describing the gesture.

"Inner movement curve @Louvre"

It was a fun exercise. The idea was to understand the gesture of the overall figure. The lines do not represent the boundary or some part of the figure. It just represents the movement. There can be an infinite number of movement curves or lines and hence we can draw more than 3 if we like.

It took me a lot of time and practice to get them right. Since the second half of our day was spent at the Louvre, I got a lot of sculptures to practice from.

Later during the week, I learnt another technique using Boxes. We drew boxes or cubes for the head, torso, chest, arms and legs. It helped me in understanding the tilt of the body and its planes. I drew the inner movement curve first and then the boxes. However, they can exist independently too.

"Figure in Boxes: @Louvre"

We practiced these for the rest of the week.

"Practicing from one of Ruben’s paintings"

Art course in Paris (2014)→ Week 2

Week 2 began with block-ins. Tim taught us how to draw envelops and block-in the main shapes. Here are a few ones i did:

"Figure Drawing 1"

"Figure Drawing 2"

The idea is to draw in the bigger shapes and not worry about the minute details. The process starts with the inner movement curve and transforms into an envelope. We then develop the envelope further by blocking in the major shapes. We can even skip the movement curve and go straight to block-ins, however, i felt more comfortable drawing the movement curve first.

There are only straight lines at this stage. We do not draw any curved lines at any point. A few things to look for are:

1. Gesture of the entire pose
2. Foreshortening — i.e. if a leg, an arm or any other body part is going away from you or coming towards you
3. Tilt of the torso — If we get the centre line of the mid section early in the process, we can draw the remaining

Tomorrow i am going to the Louvre to practice this stage.