Because Swampfox asked for it.

No, seriously, tonight was not a good night. I hope it’s just because I haven’t been to life drawing in a month. You are forewarned.

Got a very lukewarm grade on that last one, and not undeservedly… I did work hard on it, but I know it’s not very good. Too much paint, not enough precision. The bad workman blames his tools, but my crappy brushes didn’t help, I will say… they just don’t [...]

Jesus. Oils are HARD.

This is a great example of something that took a great deal of work, and looks like about 15 minutes’ work. For some people, it probably WOULD be 15 minutes’ work. Well, not your humble author.

These are just run-ups to next week’s homework, which is to produce [...]

This week: draw, and then paint, four still life compositions selected from a pool of 15-20 setups you create and do small thumbnails of, following a dozen or so rules of composition.

I wrapped a few of my shapes in color cut from colored folders, so that next week when [...]

Dump day. There are few things that feel better than going from this:

To this:

Ahhhhh.

Included in this wonderful recycling purge was tossing out a good five pounds of old drawings, from my first life drawing classes about 3½ years ago. They were in a roll about a foot across, and [...]

You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find Christmas ornament hangers before Hallowe’en.

Mission: paint cheap plastic Christmas balls in the Munsell value scale. Bigger and more manageable than the small wooden ones I did in gouache over the summer, and should be a lot more accurate too.

First step [...]

Scanned a quickiedoodle on both scanners; M470 on top, 8400F on the bottom.

I think I’m sticking with the 8400F. Anybody want a cheap, new M470?

Testing the new Canon MP470 all-in-one scanner/copier/printer thing I got as a freebie with the new mac.

Verdict: yeah, it’s a cheapie. It’s not going to replace the 8400F, or more likely, the 8400F’s replacement (when I pay the mac off). Raw off the scanner, and slightly contrast-adjusted below (tonight’s [...]

…on the first homework.

Grading so far has been rough. It’s all good though… I’m old enough not to really need a whip and carrot, I know why I’m in school… but still, a lower grade than I had hoped for still packs a kind of sting that makes me [...]

Oils are hard. They are. OK, you can moosh down a lot of value quickly with a brush and solid color, no doubt. It would take a long time to cover an 11×14 page with charcoal this opaque. But man, it’s messy, and brushes are really imprecise. At least [...]