I finally finished my old woman portrait. I have given her the title “self portrait”. She is what I think I will look like in 20-30 years. She is definitely shriveled up, but I love her. I posted a picture of her on my facebook page. I skated a little on this project as I was supposed to stand in front of a mirror and do a self portrait.
I am a newbie on this website/blog business and I have yet to figure out how to upload pictures from my camera to my blog. Hopefully I will get it figured out in the next few days. Until then, I will post pictures on my facebook page. If you want to look there and you can see all my achievements thus far.
Today I am required to start a new portrait. I choose a female figure from the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. This is to be a very large portrait and it will be done in the Sanquine style. Sanguine (Hematite) is a red-brown iron-oxide chalk, usually mined in Italy. It’s color, particularly when used on cream paper with touches of white, makes it wonderfully suited for figure drawing, and it was a staple tool of the old masters. I will use two different shades of sanguine, along with charcoal and white chalk. I again draw on the brown paper. It is a very tedious type of drawing. I use a technique in drawing called hatching. That technique combined with longer vertical and horizontal or curves stokes overlapping each other are really important to achieve the shadows and contouring. I enjoy this process and my instructor thinks I should try pastels next week, which he says are similar in style. I work on this project in the morning session and then change projects in the afternoon. Because I missed so many classes of life drawing last week, they have scheduled nude models for me this week so that I don’t completely miss out on this drawing technique. I am very grateful that the staff here is so flexible in trying to give me the most positive experience they can. Lorenzo and Cecile are the administrative backbones of this private art school. Anyone interested in more about the school can visit their website https://adg.it/en/
Like the previous day, I have a male model. I do a standing pose, then a sitting pose and 2 quick facial sketches from a side view. It is amazing how much I have learned in such a short period of time. My instructor told me that it is important that I spend some portion of each day sketching. It is the only way to hone and maintain drawing skills. I give him one of those Yeah, right looks. And he gives me one right back.
I have a very productive day and I leave class to meet my room mates for dinner. Life in Italy is grand!.
Cindy Mochel Livermore 