Working with the figure was the thing I loved most at Pratt, even though one of my painting teachers would skip circles around my easel, chanting “Inch-y by inch-y, Leonardo da Vinci” until the whole class took it up and I either stopped attempting to represent the model or left the studio. Being stubborn, I always left. Nothing like paying a fortune for a crappy education.
There were a few other teachers that I learned a lot from: Jimmy Grashow, Lenore Drumheller, Joe Smith and Charley Schuker. Mr. Shucker, whose work involved pouring paint on very large canvases, was about as far away from my approach as he could be, and he seemed to really enjoy the way I would draw with my left hand when my right got tired.
During the many years that I was commuting to NYC I would draw on the train every day. It’s not as tricky as it sounds — the secret is to pick up the pencil, not press down, every time the train hits a bump. Since I needed reference material that was easily transportable I’d xerox photos from Muybridge’s books and draw them larger. This taught me much about getting the large forms correct, dynamic line quality and proper placement and description of values.
I’ve really only dabbled in figurative work for the last four years, as I wanted to nail down my approach and get a good grip on Graydon’s color-mixing system. Last spring I was preparing for a three-man show at Susan Powell, and thought it was time to see if my still life approach would work as well for figures. Wanting to give myself an easy challenge, I picked an lesser-known Bouguereau called La Moissoneuse and cropped it very tight around the main figure’s head.
Currently, I am working on two figure series for Arcadia. Both explore the juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary in different ways. The first piece involves taking the above Bouguereau head study, which is 10″ x 9″, and painting it 48″ x 48″. A progress shot:
