Inspiration from a 94 year old!

INSPIRATION from a 94 yr old!

if you are in a SLUMP!!!

At 94 years old, Hy Snell is an energetic and awe-inspiring gentleman

Drawing & Painting the Head

DRAWING & PAINTING THE HEAD

In case you missed the drawing class this week,
here are a few highlights...

I think of Helen Van Wyk when I teach about structure and volume in drawing and painting. She often talks about painting apples. When you paint an apple, hold an apple in your hand, take a bite of out it, think about the roundness of that apple. When you paint a head, you are painting a 3 dimensional object like an apple, on a flat surface. That spherical shape will have dark, medium, light and high lighted areas, along with a front, side, top or bottom, depending on eye level. It is very helpful to place an imaginary box over the head in the beginning to define these shapes. 

As Sargent indicated in his teaching, getting the feel of that head as a mass is vital. We often jump right into the features without one thought about the volume of the whole head. 

"and under his hands, a head would be an amazing likeness long before he had so much as indicated the features themselves. In fact, it seemed to me the mouth and nose just happened with the modeling of the cheeks, and one eye, living luminous, had been placed in the socket so carefully prepared for it (like a poached egg dropped on a plate, he described the process)..."

Mary Newbold Patterson Hale, in The World Today (November 1927)

 http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/sargent.html

I found the following website and YouTube videos by Stan Prokopenko to be very helpful.

Website for other drawing videos - http://www.proko.com/videos/

Inspiration from Jamie Wyeth

 I was intrigued by the following videos and article on artist Jamie Wyeth. I saw his work  in 2005 in Maine at the Farnsworth Museum (Wyeth Center). I loved his seagull series,  entitled "Seven Deadly Sins". What an interesting man and really fun to watch him work! (painting on cardboard in the first video!)

Inferno was shot on Location in Jamie Wyeth’s Studio, on his island off the Coast of Maine. 
Jamie, a celebrated contemporary realist painter, son of Andrew Wyeth, grandson of N. C. Wyeth, has never been filmed at work until the making of this short. Working with great intensity and focus Jamie applies thick watercolors and charcoal to a 60x80 inch piece of corrugated cardboard using his fingers, hands, brushes, and paperclips. As we watch the work in progress the film brings us so close we can hear the roaring inferno of burning garbage and the shrieking of Gulls. 

CLICK HERE to watch "Inferno" 

A Wyeth Sense of Place

This film depicts the work of painter Jamie Wyeth (son of Andrew Wyeth). Mr.Wyeth shows us his love for painting and the land where he grew up.  [This is an excerpt from a half-hour program]

CLICK HERE to watch 

2 Paintings from the Seven Deadly Sins Series....

Gluttony & Anger 

CLICK images to see more...

 

February 09, 1981

 

Vol. 15

 

No. 5  PEOPLE Magazine Article

Possessive of Privacy and a Master of Disguises, Painter Jamie Wyeth Meets the World Incognito

By Richard Meryman

I really envy you," Jamie Wyeth once told his lifelong friend Jimmy Lynch. "You can be you, and nobody notices what you do. I always have to be me and everybody notices." It was no exaggeration; Jamie Wyeth was born conspicuous. Not only is he the grandson of the noted illustrator N.C. Wyeth and the son of Andrew Wyeth, America's most famous living painter, Jamie himself grew up prodigiously blessed. He was handsome, humorous, intelligent, exciting—and by 17 was painting mature portraits well beyond his father's accomplishments at the same age. At 20 he had his first New York show.  Read more...