skin study (burnt sienna under painting) (part 1 of part 1 :) )

More to come ..... must figure out wet on wet.... must try other techniques ... must continue practicing

skin study ....

Skin studies

beginning layer/ preview  

(posting first study tomorrow night) 

First Meeting with Emily Eveleth

(as this is a blog... I am allowing myself the liberty of constrained stream of conscious type writing.... see highlighted texts if confused.... )

Emily Eveleth's website

Met today with Emily Eveleth for the first time at her studio in Framingham, MA. She is an artist that I believe will be of great importance to my progress through out this graduate program. She is currently painting conceptual still lifes of jumbo sized jelly donuts that take the humorous and common place to a monumental stature ... She possesses a definite technical mastery of oil paint but most importantly she has, in one conversation, already brought me to new questions and ideas in the conceptualizing of my work.
As I am new to oil paints, she is happy to help me with technical questions, yet, I have discussed with her and feel it is most important that I use the time I get to spend with her primarily discussing the conceptual aspects of my work and addressing technical bumps when they do not directly relate to conveying meaning as quickly as possible as I feel as though it is my responsibility to find the majority of those answers elsewhere.....

 (I may wish to return to her as a mentor again towards the end of residency to truly learn as much as I can from her as I instinctively believe, a belief further grounded upon our first meeting, that working with her is an opportunity to cherish and make the most of.)

Anyways......To learn skills during this first residency I intend on taking a class in oil painting to learn technique and I will learning to use the internet more effectively as a resource for information ( building skills in photoshop etc). Regardless of my wish to avoid technicalities with her she is helping me direct my so called "skin study" (aka learning how to paint skin tones in oil.... using different techniques etc) into a tonal study in which I will dissect an image I wish to paint into several gridded sections, use photoshop to view the image in both color and black and white to learn tonal values, and then paint the image in individual sections which will then be repainted again together on a large canvas (gessoed paper to be exact) as a whole. (clarifying visual will follow in the weeks to come....)
Also she will be sending me images to study on how others have painted form... Degas... Saville....
and now I know to use vine charcoal and other small trade secrets... very exciting and will make life much easier...
Some ideas that we will be focusing on through out the semester....
the direct gaze
the awareness of the viewer and the subject.... 
..... 
Question for thought.... "Does this serve the image?" 

to be continued..