Figure Painting Class

Every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. you'll find me at The Bridge in the figure painting class taught by Justin Taylor. It's a new class that The Bridge is offering and we are currently working on an 8 week pose that I am pretty excited about.

One of the main reasons I am excited about this pose and painting is because of the model. She is an exceptional model because she poses her body excellently, she doesnt move, she gets back into her pose exactly and she doesnt have to do anything to look interesting. To top it off she has a unique renaissance look to her face that is awesome to paint. To find all of these things in a model is pretty rare. She is definitely one of my favorite models!

The other reason I am excited about this class is because my brother is taking it with me. Leo and I have not taken an art class together since Mr. Lewis' worthless AP art class in high school.

Justin requires us to be 100% accurate which means that we start with a pencil drawing. However, since this is a painting class I am choosing to draw on a gessoed masonite panel. That way I can easily make corrections when I need to, and I can also begin the painting process at any time. Here is a picture of the pencil drawing from the first week.



After the model has been accurately and academically rendered in pencil I can begin painting. The first step is to seal the drawing with "fix-it" spray so it doesn't smear. At the end of week 2, I completed the under painting. The under painting is basically re-drawing in paint. I chose to use burnt umber because I could tell I was going to use a lot of cool colors on her skin and that would help bring warmth and life to the finished painting. This is a picture of my painting after the second week.




I'll post updates on the progress of this piece.