22 May 2008

canon

watercolor on arches CP 600gsm, 41" x 21".
a slow couple of weeks; cleaning up files and docs from this spring's figure drawing campaign, landscaping around the studio, entertaining guests, and interviewing financial advisors. sorted through some pictures of april with her year old son and worked on a method of analyzing figures and portraits into harmonic intervals defined by a grid. so far the results have been promising.

spent several mornings editing and writing pages for handprint.com, in particular a page on color harmonies and another on figure painting. this led me back to the topic of a figure canon and the various proportional schemes that have been worked out since ancient times.

in this image of siena i subtly adjusted her figure proportions to correspond to a specific canon, not the classical one. i used a coarse charcoal to outline the figure and kept the light modeling very basic. i especially like how the flesh tones turned out; siena has a very pale but not sickly complexion, close to a warm granite.

3 comments:

Nick said...

i prefer this type of skin tone, at least in this kind of painting...Avery-ish. Also dig that color on the floor, what is that combo?
Enjoyed the interview, did I get the job?

William K. Moore said...

I agree with the above artist.. he seems to know what he has written. The navy blue works well to make the figure pop and in my mind in a most erotic way. I like figure work that includes the libido.. on a subtle level. I really enjoy this one... all the way from Chicago.

David Burge said...

I like this one Bruce. A harmonious composition with some spacial dynamics pushing and pulling between the positive and negative shapes. The outline on the figure flattens it but that is belied by the form indicated by the light. I like the repetition of the chair spokes on the pillow. I find that the lamp slightly unsettles the spacial logic and may well be a cluttersome item in the composition. I'm not sure where it's sitting...on the table or behind it?
The skin tone works well, very cool painting...in both ways.