I’ve been lucky enough to find a bunch of books on artists that I really admire and have started to do some studies of their work when I’m waiting for oil paint to dry and not working on inking and coloring Nana Boo Boo. I’ll hunt down the link for that in case someone wants to find a copy of Other Strangeness, or perhaps if someone wants to subscribe and help keep that publication headed in the right direction.

Anyway. I’m studying some Leyendecker illustrations of kids:

I don’t know if Leyendecker did these in gouache or what (it appears that it may have been in egg tempera paint). I did my studies with pencil and watercolor to make sure I could get them done quickly with as little blending as possible, and it worked fine for my purposes. All I want to do is get some more milage out of the children that I paint in the paintings I’m working on for my Children and War series. And Leyendecker maybe does something a little bit like “over-real” or something with the kids. I’m not sure I can back that statement up with anything, but for me I think I want the kids I paint to be less “plastic” and more sketchy (sort of like what’s here, but with oils).

I also did a study of a Robert McGinnis painting. What I learned recently was that some of these guys were using a Bloptropilocatlifragilictiousdosus (I can’t remember what it was actually called, but it’s a projector) to get their images onto canvas at the right size. Some of them were tracing over photographs. I personally do not care how the art is made. If it’s good, then it’s good. And I think a lot of McGinnis’ work is very good. What it actually did for me was make me feel freer about tracing things (not other people’s work) in order to get some of the heavy lifting done quicker when I have a deadline. It just makes sense when you have a timeline that you meet it. If that means you trace a photo to get the figure right, then so be it. Obviously you can’t invent a traced figure and that is going to have ups and downs; maybe it won’t be as dynamic as one you invent could be, but art is all about choices and no matter what choice you make something is going to suffer as a result or might not be as good as it could’ve been as a result of making another part of the art better. So…I did a study of one of his paintings.

This one I did way too fast. Because I didn’t spend enough time on the drawing the neck is broken and there are other problems. But I definitely got a lot out of the lighting and color, and there is also the fact that I recognized that I broke the neck. Which returns me to my bit about the tracing. I do want to be better at figure drawing (this is a painting, and so it isn’t the same as drawing a model), and in order to do that I believe that I must keep on going to life drawing classes and studying anatomy. One of these days I will bite the bullet and set myself up a schedule for self-study to compliment the painting class and then post that here. So much of this has had to be accomplished without anyone to hold my hand and that is pretty great because of the freedom it provides, but there is also those days where I actually get time to work and then the canvas just calls me names until I go outside and run, or make a coffee, or read a book I’ve already read. No one cares if I paint the things I want to paint, so I have to motivate myself. And that is the real goal anyway. To make the things I want to make, and to improve each time.