Al Fresco Art Club in Suspended Animation, August 22, 2021

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In honor of the Al Fresco Art Club, which is on hiatus, I challenged myself to be patient with Rebelle 4 and try some digital “dry” tools. The tools look good to me. Now I have to practice using them…or not. If I can accomplish the same thing with Photoshop, I would not use Rebelle 4. Phtoshop has the best feel for me.

I’ve been studying from Steve Huston’s awesome and amazing Figure Drawing for Artists — Making Every Mark Count. When I first started drawing six years ago I bought a year of membership to New Masters Academy and Steve’s courses got me excited about figure drawing. Six years later I’m as challenged as I was when I began. I’ve drawn thousands of heads but it’s a rare, magical day when I get the eyes right. As for hands, I’m still a newbie. No matter, though. When I look over my old drawings, I can see that I’ve made good progress. An inch a day may be a slow way to go, but it’s still progress.

Al Fresco Art Club Challenge, Nov 29, 2020 -- Painting with Artrage

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Painting with Artrage iOs. Resource from New Masters Academy

Today’s Al Fresco Art Club challenge was to paint digitally and get a traditional look in one hour. I used my iPad and Artrage to paint this picture of Rajiv, one of the male models featured by the New Masters Academy. I used Artrage because it has convincing oil brushes.

I also updated to Artrage 6 on my desktop and then spent the afternoon trying to figure out why the Epson printer has been acting funky. To my dismay, the printer seemed to work flawlessly. However, I won’t know for sure until I create a printer color profile for the sticker paper we use for sticker products. I’ll create the profile with the X-Rite Color Munki. While I’m at it, I’ll create color profiles for my Cintiq and for my iMac. I’m using the iMac as a second monitor for my Windows 10 PC. iMacs from 2009 and 2010 will work as second monitors using a displayport connection.

Al Fresco Art Club -- Revisting New Masters Academy

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When I first started learning to draw and paint, I signed up for a year of New Masters Academy. Every day of the week I did a one-hour set of sketching and drawing using my iPad. That was four years ago. Today we were feeling nostalgic and thought it would be fun to do an hour of drawing and painting people. I decided to do paint a woman’s head in a 3/4 view. Yes, that’s supposed to be a woman!

I used my iPad and painted on one layer. I used a simple round brush and painted like crazy for one hour. I’m really happy with the subject’s left eye. The right eye is definitely wonky and I was tempted to go digital and adjust it, but I resisted temptation and left it askew. Many of the features are okay on their own…it’s just that they don’t harmonize well. All the same, I feel good about this painting when I compare it to what I was capable of four years ago.

Painting a satisfactory human head is a real challenge. We’ve decided that we can improve our skills in all aspects of art by doing more anatomical drawing. Sounds good to me.