Fantastic Titanic Art Week: Part 3!

Last Tuesday was one of the biggest October storms in recent Sacramento history. Needless to say, I wasn't about to go outside and paint in that type of rain. Instead I stayed inside and gave my friend some painting lessons. It ended up being a marathon of a day which left us both absolutely exhausted but it was a very rewarding experience...

I painted this still life for him in about 2 hours. His observations of it were that he didn't know where I was going with it at first, and that it didn't really come together until it was about 75% of the way through...



This painting was from a photo of a model he shot at his studio a few weeks ago. She's an insanely built fitness model who is very beautiful, in my opinion. Anyways, I picked this photo because I thought it was fairly basic and a very interesting pose. The proportions were a challenge because I've never painted such a muscular female before.

The idea we came up with was that he would follow everything I would do. He actually would paint from my painting instead of the reference photo. I would tell him every color mixture, and where I would put it. At first it was fairly easy for me to follow. I started with the drawing, then the block-in of the background, the light and shadow side. As soon as it got to the basic modeling part is where it got hard.... Having to explain every mixture, like, "Ok, I'm going to mix white, yellow ochre, and a bit of alizarin crimson, it's a little cool, so I will mix a little ultramarine blue into it" for every stroke, it gets exhausting! And also, I learned alot about my own process and what makes my paintings successful. For example I learned how much the way I handle my brush contributes to how I model form. If I just use flat strokes as opposed to twisting the brush with my fingers, it's not nearly as dynamic...

I learned about how much you can teach a person at a time. It was really a test of patience as I waited for him to catch up. By the end, I was barely making sense, and he had trouble following me. My brain was fried.... Normally this painting would take me 2 1/2 hrs. to finish. This one took me 5 hours!



For the record I'm posting the painting he did.



He was really stoked to see how I paint, and to have me break it down... It's something I would have fun doing again, but it's sooo tiring. Maybe I'm not used to it is all. It's inspiring though, and I will definitely do some more tutorials soon. I hope in the near future I can set aside some time to do some more video tutorials to upload to youtube.