I have the honor and privilege of studying with two very awesome painters at LAAFA: Sean Cheetham and Nathan Fowkes. I'll be posting up class notes and homework.
WK 1 & 2 : Portrait Painting with Sean Cheetham
The first week was a demo. Some notes I took included:
- Sean draws using abstract shapes. Doesn't use construction.
- As far as likeness, exaggerate rather than do generic. Otherwise it just looks more generic later on.
- He washes the shadows with thin paint, and paints the lights opaquely. It gives this "relief" effect.
- Don't stare at the shadows too long, stare at the light and find the value relationship.
- Don't leave anything on the canvas that is wrong - or it will affect your judgement on other stuff.
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| My 5 hour painting for week 2. |
WK 1 & 2 : Sketching from Life with Nathan Fowkes
This is class is a combination of figure quick sketch, head drawing, costume, animals, and nature.
Nathan describes 4 challenges of drawing from life:
1) practice: sketchbook everyday
2) time limit: distill complexity to a simple read on the surface in short amount of time.
3) value limitations: cannot draw what you see. You have to edit it down.
4) perception: simply the complexity. don't exaggerate detail.
Week 1: We first started with drawing basic shapes. Then, we turned them into basic simplified silhouettes. Nathan wanted us to simplify it as much as possible. Finally, we used contours to established a sense of form.
Week 2: We moved into using value. We created positive and negative shapes of the figure - again simplifying it as much as possible. Next, we used simple form shading and a negative black silhouette to accentuate the pose.
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