Friday, September 18, 2009

Hannah


On paper, 18"x24", with marker and pastel.

I drew this yesterday, from life. I believe it was a 30-minute pose.

26 comments:

  1. I know I must sound like a broken record, but 30 minutes! 30 minutes! You've got to be kidding me. I can't even imagine.

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  2. i liked this one because must to be brave for to use this color and make it work .
    it is great .

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  3. Another lovely, introspective piece. Arresting at a glance, then hard to look away.

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  4. Is her face really this interesting, or did you just make it so?

    (Margaret and I have so much in common.)

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  5. a lot of ground to cover on a thirty minute pose. Well done and I like the added white (pencil, oil chalk?) highlight on the side of her face.

    You've got me in a purple-ee mood

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  6. Thanks, all.

    Margaret, I probably sound like a broken record, too, but it's about practice. Speed increases with practice. (I'm very out of practice with the markers, so picking them up again is hard for me.)

    AH, she's got a good, strong face, but she's around 20, so . . . some of both.

    PA, that bit of extra light is from a stub of almost white (with a slight blue tint) pastel stick.

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  7. I don't know how this sounds, but it looks like someone threw purple syrup on her. Which leads to my questions: why did you choose to use that color?

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  8. CO, she's definitely purple, though the extreme effect may be because of monitor differences. I chose purple because the dark background drape was leaning in that direction, but mostly just because I felt like it and wanted to see what that purple marker would do. (On the crummy laptop monitor I'm having to use right now, the drawing looks dark blue.)

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  9. Looks good! Obviously you were sitting in backlight, which is not always easy.

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  10. My monitor shows a lovely purple. I most definitely like it.

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  11. Mine does too. Purple holds a special place in my heart — ever since, when coloring at school in the second grade, I made a purple sky.

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  12. What a dramatic, sculptural portrait - wonderful!

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  13. CO just asked what I call a "stump the artist question". I should hire him to practice with before a presentation. I always end up being blind sided by the obvious.

    my monitor is registering purple with a prussian blue tint on the lower left. Macs make your pixels pretty

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  14. Fascinating.
    I like the colour too.
    This reminds me that I've tried to draw in yellow only for a few years, but I must admit, it's hard to achieve really dark shadows with just yellow... mmh, purple is a better choice...

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  15. At first its the color, then its the downturned mouth, then its the slump of the shoulders and then, to top it all off, its the black black eyes.

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  16. I was the one stumped, so I asked. Maybe my fav word is "Why?"

    However, occasionally I make an innocent comment or question to an artist and their response leads me to believe they only wanna hear the applause.

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  18. Thanks, all.

    PA, good description; I think this question stumps because this choice to depart from local color was mostly inspiration and not part of any logical thought process, so there really isn't a logical explanation. (And my portable pc is making everything look less than enticing.)

    Werner, I'd love to see what you've managed with just yellow. It's such a light value to wrest a feeling of darkness out of.

    CP, all your comments are welcome, here.

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  19. My parents had a signed Munch litho of Adam and Eve all done in pink. When we were kids we thought the pink was extremely odd. Where are all the normal colors? Why isn't the sky blue and the rock gray and the leaves green and...

    But we lived with the litho for many years and came to, if not an agreement, an appreciation.

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  20. I tried to google this litho; I didn't come up with the particular one, but I did get to read about Munch and see other lithos and paintings, including the 1898 painting "Metabolism," originally "Adam and Eve." http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.art4net.com/munch0.JPG&imgrefurl=http://www.art4net.com/MUNCH.html&usg=__ELKZXWM6QeAD0njeSAGcvZc_4sg=&h=405&w=600&sz=50&hl=en&start=9&um=1&tbnid=UppqAziGBlMHTM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dedvard%2Bmunch%2Badam%2Band%2Beve%2Blithograph%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

    Is that the painting the litho was based on? Anyway, the same site says "the work reveals the central place the fall of man myth has in Munch's pessimistic philosophy of love." Pink sounds like an extraordinary choice for a litho of this.

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  21. Jean: Good strong structure in the head. Also I like your use of the core of the shadow running from forehead, across the face and down the throat.

    pasadjacent: I love your comment about the "stump the artist" question. I was once asked something similar by a respected gallerist. I was showing some of my minimalist early plastic pieces. She wanted to know why I had made each one a different color.
    I used to advise my students, "If you don't know an answer, make something up."
    So I answered, "To contain the movement." The important thing is too keep a straight face and answer with no hesitation!
    She nodded - also with a very straight face!

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  22. No Jean, wasn't any of those. This one was all wavy lines, rather dreamy, with Eve picking the apple and I think (haven't seen it for awhile) Adam is sort of helping her.

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  23. Shanna...your goood. Me? I just get stumped

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  24. pasadjacent: I do think some questions are sincere questions,such as CO's, but I'm wondering if gallerists,in particular, try to get us to "cave" . I'm borrowing this term from a lawyer friend.

    I got stumped recently when making a presentation. "Are you still working?", she asked. I don't see and pieces dated 2009. I had taken in mostly framed work(the pastels). I made something up and secretly decided never to put the date on again.

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  25. oops - typo. Make that any...pieces.

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