Life Drawing in 3-color oils

I'm very proud of this class. Many of these folks had never worked in oils before. All these fine drawings are done on gessoed paper, which is a good learning material although it does take some labor to prepare. The colors were Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Ochre, and Alizarin Crimson. While not the hugest palette possible, these three colors do enable a lot of effects. Some of the students were struggling with the fumes, even though my studio couldn't be more wide open. I love Yumiko's unintentionally whimsical drawings. Richard of course brings the full blaze of his erotic intensity to bear. Didiet is making amazing progress, and so is Caroline Delano (in the picture). I had a chance to do a quick drawing in between making the rounds and snooping over shoulders, which is good because it reminds me how difficult the assignment is.

This is the latest sketch for the Hi'iaka and Lohi'au painting, hopefully for the Princeville St. Regis. (click on it to see it at a larger size)

Drawing in Oils: Monochrome

In this month's Quixotic attempt to teach oil painting in four quick lessons, the second Thursday class tackled rendering our beautiful model in a single color, burnt umber. The last drawing for the day was burnt umber plus white on a toned ground of gessoed kraft paper. This is really a big challenge but the students got through it with fairly good results, especially of course the talented teaching assistant Tuko Fujisaki.

Big Work in Progress

The end of August is my deadline for this painting I'm doing for the Princeville St. Regis hotel. Naturally my friends are all very alarmed that I'm still in the sketch stage on the project, but the painting will just be in two colors and so the graphic design is the most important thing to accomplish. The designers were inspired by a pareo design I did way back in 1983 showing Hi'iaka and Lohi'au, the goddess and prince in the ancient Hawaiian legend. So even though I have shown dozens of sketches of varying complexities, they have consistently sent me back to the drawing board, wanting it to be in that original woodblocky style. It's been a real challenge!

Life Drawing in August: Oils and Acrylics

I thought that it would be fun to let the students try some juicier drawing techniques! Oils in particular have a bad rep as being difficult but, depending on how you use them, they can be as easy as a box of crayons. They are the ultimate in a moveable, changeable medium and they should help in the study of overall shape and background-foreground relationship (i.e. negative space!). Plus they are wonderful for capturing light effects.

I find acrylics a bit more challenging but they can yield wonderful rich results.

We'll use a very limited palette of colors, on recycled drawing papers. The emphasis will still be on observing, understanding and rendering the human form, with the tools, tricks, and perceptions entailed in the process.

more Bugsy

Now that Bugsy's gone I really like the sketches I did during our beach sketching expeditions. The photos are of when I first found him and he was a malnourished wreck. But still cute!











Note to self: Draw loved ones much more often, if not daily!

Bugsy R.I.P.

I hope not many blogs are written by heartbroken people, otherwise who would read them? Nevertheless I thought I'd post a last good-bye to Bugsy, the amazing little dog who kept me company for 3/4s of this year. We were minding our own business on a residential street in Hilo, waiting for my acupuncturist, when a big white dog came out from under a fence. To my surprise he grabbed Bugsy in his jaws, crept back under the fence, and ran away. I leaped over the fence and pursued him and he finally put Bugsy down. But Bugs was so badly hurt that later at the vets I had to have him put to sleep.

Bugsy was a really fun little guy, a tiny creature with a huge personality. He looked like he was cobbled together out of spare parts from other animals. He had a mane and a curved neck like a mule, with huge ears and bulging eyes. When he yawned he transformed into a mythical gryphon with a fiercely curving tongue. I'll miss him terribly. Fortunately Tuko sketched him several times.

Life Drawing #3: Line

Many of the students in my class know how to draw well already, but I've noticed that most have a rushed and sketchy approach. Either that or a heavy-handed quality. So I assigned the venerable "Blind Contour" lesson, where you draw slowly and carefully without looking at the paper. I wish I'd thought to photograph these results as they had a wonderful Picasso-esque quality. Then I relented and let them look at the paper for the rest of the afternoon, which in some ways led back to hesitancy, erasure and dissatisfaction. But the point is just to go slow and observe more carefully.

We had Poni modeling for us, a wonderful Hawaiian maiden with natural grace. Of course having a good-looking model can sometimes make a class harder since one then has an anxiety about doing justice to such beauty.

Portrait of Phillip Paul

Phillip Paul is an art collector whom I've known for many years. He has a nice group of works by Douglas Simonson, who is an artist I admire. Phil recently bought a big (3' x 7') painting I did of Hanalei Valley, on Kaua'i, and has been stopping by on occasion to make periodic payments. Needless to say I think he is wonderful. So I corralled him into sitting for a portrait. I'm not sure it's finished yet; it has a strangely stiff quality, like a Russian icon. Maybe I'll get him to bring it back down so I can soften it up and inject more life....

Drawing Joe Lake

Joe was a wonderful model, a fine specimen of the bodybuilder's art. He put a huge amount of effort into the session, actually going through the strict dehydration regimen those guys do before a competition. Like all really superb models, though, he left me wishing that I myself had been in better form, equal to the task of interpreting and recording all that evidence of muscle under skin.

Afterward he was kind enough to assume the Lohi'au pose for my lobby painting-in-progress for the Princeville hotel. In exchange I did this big quick sketch portrait for him to take home to his wife Fawnette. As John Singer Sargent once famously said, "A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth."

Life Drawing #2: Proportion

How do you introduce the study of anatomy in one short lesson? Personally I get a bit tongue-tied at the challenge. So I stood our model Neil up on a pedestal (sorry I forgot to take photos) and showed the classic proportional trick of using the height of the head as a measuring device. Adult humans are generally about 7.5 head heights tall, but if you want to make them look heroic you make them 8. In other words you make the head smaller, for whatever that says about our concept of heroes.

Oddly enough I got different head heights when I turned Neil to different angles. I hate when that happens. I guess it has to do with how the measurement is taken in the first place, and a one-inch change makes a big difference over the course of the whole body.

Next week: LINE; I'm looking for an interesting, maybe voluptuous model with whom we can trace outlines in a sensitive manner, in soft pencil on white paper.

Morgan saves the Day

Our scheduled model Wailana did not show up and so we pressed our youngest prettiest member into service as a substitute model. She had never done it before but likes to do new things, and as it turned out she was a natural. So beautiful and graceful that Matisse for sure would have loved to draw her!

Our model for next Saturday is a great and very well developed body builder named Joe, and so I am thinking of changing my plan for our Thursday afternoon class. I think I will lead a crash study of anatomy and the way the muscles attach to the skeletal structure, to help keep students from getting lost in the array of fine bumpy muscles that Joe will present.

(Materials will be provided)

First Life Drawing Session

I began my five-week life drawing intensive with an exercise in seeing negative shapes. If you can recall the coyote (from the roadrunner cartoons) punching through a wall at high speed, and leaving his exact shape as a hole in the wall, the solid wall would be his negative shape. These can be very helpful in composing a drawing, and getting the shape of the body to fall into place on the paper.

So I cut some large cardboard frames, and had Neil model on a table behind them so you could only see parts of his body, surrounded by various-shaped glimpses of the white wall behind. Then I had the students draw that rectangle in careful perspective (a challenge in itself!) and then sketch the white areas in white conte. As the group struggled with this concept I berated myself over a really bad way to start the class, but by the end of the 2 1/2 hours they were getting it and producing some great drawings! And overall they agreed that it was a helpful lesson.

Next week I plan to review the gesture drawing and why it is part of our usual life drawing practice. I'll also give a quick review of anatomy and human proportions.

Register for this class (Thursday afternoons for the month of July) by calling me at 965-7642! Or email me at arthurjohnsen@hotmail.com.

We also have a non-instructional session Saturday mornings at my studio from 9-11:30 AM, model fee by donation.

Life Drawing with Arthur Johnsen

Arthur will have his first life drawing session with instructions this Thursday, July 2nd, from 2 to 4:30. Be ready to learn a lot. Materials for the first class will be provided. Please call 965-7642 and let him know you're coming. (Click Image to enlarge)

Art Opening, Friday, June 19th

Here's our newest gallery member, Bonnie Sol-Hahn, putting up her work for the latest show. 'Little Paintings of the BIG'. She's the featured artist but the rest of us will have new paintings as well.