Tuesday

It's snowing out today and it looks like we are going to have a white Christmas after all.

I added a few figures to one of the boats on the right, I just remembered another criticism from the list was to add figures. Now its time to put the painting aside and forget about it for a week or so, then I can take another look at it after Christmas. From Friday's crit session I also had a list of things to do on the Pottery woman.


At the session we had a woman there, who had done some pottery before and knew a little about the process involved. She told me the pot was too small for the mirror, so I enlarged it about 50% and also made the spinning wheel a little bigger. Next I darkened down the background, which was far too warm and at the same time made some of the objects back there less noticeable.



With the addition of a little orange around the face and front of the woman, I end up with a glowing effect from the light of the window.....ah, the window! That was another problem, some people at the crit thought the window was open, another words they didn't recognize the cloth hanging over the window. In reality the woman there had hung a cloth over it to help block out the strong sunlight. So to make it read like a cloth, I needed to show some sign of a window behind. A shadow from some mutton bars hopefully will do the trick. I also want to add an element of red into the work, she has an old dirty gray cloth next to her, which is used to clean off the hands. Maybe I could make it a little cleaner and red in color. Most Potters could care less what color the rag is, so why not give it a little color!

Last night we had a nude figure painting session at Rick Graham's place with some of the other crit members. There we worked on a painting of a rather nice looking well endowed woman for three hours. Which for me is good, I need the practice.......Other people might say "yeah, right I bet its' good for you to be staring at her for three hours!!!"

Rick has it set up in his living room under artificial light, so it can be a little tricky to judge the colors accurately. I am so use to the cool north light of my studio, that it becomes hard to figure out the skin colors under yellow indoor lighting. Hopefully I can get into a routine of practicing every week.

Richard Boyer