Portrait Class #3

I love our portrait class. It's extraordinary for me to see folks of all abilities and experiences tackling one of the most difficult art projects and accomplishing such wonderful pieces! Craig, Rick and Elijah are three friends of widely differing appearances who were willing to come and sit for us. We moved from a single color to a triad of colors. Next week, our final portrait class will use three colors plus white on a tinted ground.

We'll be meeting on Friday since I'll be on Kaua'i for the week, helping to restretch and install the big mural I just finished for the Princeville St. Regis Hotel.

(Shown below, my class helper and artist extraordinaire, Tuko Fujisaki)

Princeville St. Regis Mural

With the help of my amazing temporary assistant Neil, I painted and repainted and tightened up edges and covered errors to the point where my big Hi'iaka and Lohi'au mural was ready to be photographed by Robbyn Peck, who has the giclee printing business Island Giclee in Hilo. Then I rolled it up and packed it in cardboard, and did the same to the stretcher bars and the plywood backing, so it can be shipped to Kaua'i! I'll breathe a big sigh when it's finally installed, which I'll go over to help with next week.

Portrait Class & Princeville Painting

Mostly what I'm doing these days is jamming on the mural for the Princeville St. Regis Hotel. Having spent months proposing various sketches, now I have just days to actually paint the thing in all its 8' x 9' glory. Fortunately the designer insisted that it be just one color on a cream background, which makes it a matter of fine tuning shapes and filling them in.

Nothing can keep me from my portrait class, though, it's so much fun. I get to tell people what to do! Not only that but -- annoyingly enough, often I'll lean in or take their seat and actually demonstrate on their drawing itself. I can't think of a better way to show how to make progress, although I can tell it's a struggle for some of the students to maintain equanimity! I think it's a good practice to not be so attached to the actual drawing and be willing to change it radically.

Our Models were Yoko, an exquisite Japanese friend, and a beautiful young artist named Stella. It was very hard to draw Stella so she looks as young as she actually is!

Life Drawing: Portraits

September is portrait month at the AJ studio. This is in honor of Didier who always focuses on the face in any drawing of a model. Actually most people do this until they learn the discipline of treating the whole figure with equal attention. I rounded up three very short-haired friends and we did a round robin of profiles and frontal portraits. Next week we'll tackle the more difficult and complex 3/4 angles.

Life Drawing: Oils! Final Class!

This was a fun class for me because I got to do a couple of demonstration paintings. Not many students showed up, sad to say since it was one of the best classes yet, but the small group made it much less of a chore. Nevertheless afterward I was very tired and had to lie down before my birthday dinner at Kalani!

We worked on a rather dark purplish gessoed paper in Alizarin Crimson, Yellow Ochre, Ultramarine Blue, and Permalba White. The challenge was to raise the colors up to a full range of brilliance in spite of the limited palette. Most of the paintings remained in the dark range but especially after a little photoshop enhancement they look really fun!

Next Thursday we'll start on our month of portrait drawing, provided I don't have to go to Kaua'i to install the new painting/mural.

Life Drawing in September: Portraiture

Here's a little flyer for next month's life drawing Thursday class. So often in drawing the figure, people zero in on the face and spend excessive time and energy rendering it. For various reasons this can make for a very wierd drawing. To honor this impulse and give the students a chance to work it out of their systems I decided a whole month of portraiture might be in order.

We'll tackle the structure of the skull, neck and shoulders, and work on creating convincing sculptural renditions of the forms in space. We'll look at the differences between sexes, body types and races, and skin colorations, and how to convey these artistically. Starting with charcoal and progressing through conte and monochromatic paint, we'll end the month with painted portraits.

I'm hoping to find multiple models for each Thursday afternoon. I'd like to work out an arrangement where the model gets to keep the portraits rather than expecting the normal monetary donations. Any volunteers?? Call me at 965-7642 or email me arthurjohnsen@hotmail.com

Princeville Update

I'm working to make this sketch resemble the original pareo design from my portfolio that inspired the designers at the Princeville St. Regis. I think it will be easier when I'm working at full size (8' x 9') but first I have to satisfy myself and the designers with this preliminary. Yes, I know the horizon line looks tilted. That's one of those things that pop out when you make the switch to a digital image. I experimented in photoshop placing some of my current and previous sketches into the actual wall niche.










(down below is the original pareo, as hung up in my studio)