Friday, January 30, 2009

Figure of Asian Woman Reclining, 5" x 7", Oil on Panel

"Letting Down Her Hair"



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I started ploughing through my collection of photos today. I have hundreds of models I've worked with that never see the light of day. That's because they often don't catch the light or ambiance I'm after. As I take dozens of each pose just slightly different, that amounts to a lot of unused photos. I decided this pose of Julie would work pretty well. I wanted to try some ideas I had on color temperature. Overall, I like the way it came out. Some things I think warrant changing but I think that I may do a larger piece of this same pose. Any thoughts?

2 comments:

Art with Liz said...

Hi Susan, you guys over there paint and post so much I can keep up! Have just seen your 'Storm Watch' and absolutely love it. You can do so much - still life, portrait and landscape. Fantastic. I love thick brush strokes with lots of paint - it's what I'm striving for - and this painting is full of luscious paint.

Susan Martin Spar said...

Thanks Liz. I strive for it too but often find that I'm still skimpy on my palette. Lately, I've taken to scooping the paint up on the brush. I'm finding out too that if the paint is too "short" it doesn't hold the brush stroke well and performs differently. While Maroger goes a long way to addressing this, my teacher, Tenaya Sims, says that grinding your own makes the paint "longer" and increases handling ability. Most manufactured paints don't have this advantage because of the binders and extenders they use. I didn't understand the "short/long" thing until he demonstrated it. You can take a palette knife and smack the paint in sort quick repeated strokes. If the paint "follows" the knife and creates long strings as the knife is pulled up away from the paint, then it is "long". Most manufactured paint only creates short strings. It's really interesting to see it demonstrated. I tried it on some of my paints and some were longer than others, but all in all, they didn't perform the way his did. Interesting.