Andrew Loomis (updated)

The poor image quality in the last post has bothered me, and I have now (back from a week of vacation) rescanned both pages while allowing the scanner to choose its setup automatically. It’s a bit better now (ultimately the best mode for sharing notebook sketches is perhaps video), and I realize in any case that I should quickly proceed to Loomis’ sections on lips and eyes, for all these faces look very grumpy indeed :)

Andrew Loomis

Yesterday I came across information on Andrew Loomis and his book Drawing the Head and Hands (1956), obviously a long-time classic but hitherto unknown to me. It for instance contains very enchanting portraits of Eisenhower-era girls in its later sections. Early on Loomis insists that all heads should be constructed from round ball shapes, and while keeping their three-dimensionality constantly in mind. This is a welcome step forward from the grid-based technique I’ve been depending on lately, and so I’ve done two pages worth of exercises. Here is one … (pencil/Moleskine notebook, 13 x 21 cm)

Hopeless (continued)

Despite my original practice goal, today I quickly lost patience with copying the multitude of exact original lines. As a result, I was able to finish this work in a single session, which is again a first for this humble painter.

Here I also gave water-miscible oil paint a first try, and experienced them as convenience colors, no more. Especially the titanium white in my basic set had a gum-like quality, which even made the tube burst and leak when I pressed too hard to release some paint. I will perhaps move back to regular oil colors despite of some health concerns about using turpentine in my small apartment. (water-miscible oil/canvas, 19.5 x 19.5 cm)

Hopeless

In looking ahead at continuing my oil painting experiments, I thought it may be fun to take inspiration from a Roy Lichtenstein painting such as Hopeless (1963) next. Its selection of colors is very simple, and since it itself reproduces comics artwork, a lot depends on how the dark lines are drawn, how their widths are varied, etc. All in all this should give ample opportunity for practicing with a fine brush. I’ve now prepared a precursor sketch (pencil/paper, 17 x 17 cm).

Tree’s skeleton at sunset (continued)

I made some more progress on the painting and added another shot to the original post below. Hurray, looks as if this may become my first complete proper oil painting ever.

Tree’s skeleton at sunset

I am an admirer of the Hudson River school of painters, and their complex depiction of light in naturalistic landscape paintings. I first encountered this art when seeing Sanford Robinson Gifford’s A Gorge in the Mountains (1862) at the New York Metropolitan Museum, and I remember staying in front of that painting for quite a while.

Now I don’t know yet what exact techniques Gifford and his colleagues were using, and I’m obviously painting at a much more basic level. But I also recently obtained a copy of The Big Book of Painting Nature in Oil, which I find quite attractive and useful. Among its more than hundred lesson topics is one (“Translating a Tree’s Skeleton at Sunset”) that achieves a somewhat reminiscent impression of the sky with simple means.

So far I took step one, i.e. prepared the background. My sky ended up a bit more red (less transparent and yellow) than the painting in the book (and altogether too expressionistic for Hudson River school principles, I would imagine), but the gradient came out well (better than the image actually shows). I’m quite happy with the result so far, because I have learned a new technique with a fan brush. Having had some droplets of color sprayed on my T-shirt and curtain was also part of that lesson, and reminds me that having a separate room as a studio would be nice. Oh well, more to come …

step 1: background	step 2: some foreground