Technique Archives - Page 12 of 12 - DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

2009/07/03

Alabaster & Obsidian

Filed under: Color,Figure Drawing: Models — Tags: Art Modeling, Color, Crayons, Figures, Nudes, Portraits, Technique — fred @ 14:49

Tragic Alley, 2006, by Fred Hatt

Alley is an actress and a great professional artist’s model with strawberry blonde hair and alabaster skin. In trying to capture the impression of brightness when drawing Alley, I use a lot of white crayon. But clearly there are other color tendencies that I can see – pinks and yellows and pale blues. These are not so much the surface color of the skin, which is pretty near white, but result from the translucency and reflectiveness of the skin. Light penetrates below the surface, where blood flow gives it a reddish tone. Other colors reflect off the satiny surface of the skin, picking up the colors of surrounding objects and light sources. The slight yellowness is probably imparted by whatever low level of pigment (melanin) is there.

Alley, 2009, by Fred Hatt

There are basically three types of melanin, the pigment that causes the spectrum of human skin tones and hair colors. As the relative levels of red, green and blue in a computer monitor produce a wide range of hues, so the varying concentration of pigments create complexions we might describe as ivory, ruddy, olive, mahogany, butterscotch, cafe au lait, brown, and black, and all the hair colors from platinum blond and ginger through jet black. The three pigments are black eumelanin, brown eumelanin, and pheomelanin, which is reddish. Most hair-covered mammals have relatively little skin pigmentation, so scientists believe dark skin evolved as a protection against sun exposure and was later lost in populations that migrated out of the tropical regions.

The redness of blood in capillaries shows through the skin, as we can observe in flushing and blushing. A model holding a standing pose for a long time may show a noticeably redder tone in the legs and feet, and sometimes in the hands if they’re hanging down, as gravity causes blood to pool in the lower areas. In some light-skinned people you can see veins through the skin, especially around breasts, neck, shoulders and inner arms. Veins have a bluish appearance, even though venous blood is deep red, not blue. This phenomenon apparently results from the fact that the veins themselves absorb more light than other structures underlying the skin. As most of the light that reflects back through the skin is reddish, the relativistic nature of color perception causes the impression of blue in these less reflective areas.

Jessi, 2009, by Fred Hatt

Of course sun exposure causes an increase of pigment in the skin. The pinkness of the skin immediately following a sunburn is, as far as I understand, a result of inflammation in the capillaries, and so is imparted by blood, not pigment. The increase of pigment we know as tanning follows more slowly.

Beth Sunburned, 2003, by Fred Hatt

Veins don’t show through very dark skin, but dark skin still has the qualities of translucency and reflective sheen. Backlight that glances off the surface of dark skin can have a particularly vivid effect, as shown in this drawing where cool-toned window light comes from behind the model, Ken.

Kenneth, 2009, by Fred Hatt

To my eye, dark skin often seems to take on a reddish tone in the shadows, and a golden tone in the highlights. I think this has to do with the way the light penetrates the surface and reflects back. African and African-American skin tones have an even broader range of hues than European or Asian types. The model for the drawing below has a very dark complexion. I was taken with the range of colors of light I could see in her skin, reflecting off the sheen, glancing through the edges, bouncing into the shadows.

Aimi, 2009, by Fred Hatt

I’m not medically trained, so it’s possible I have gotten some of my physiological facts wrong. If you have better knowledge, leave a comment.

All drawings in this post are Caran d’Ache aquarelle crayon on gray Fabriano paper, 70 cm x 50 cm.

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2009/05/10

Painting with Light

Filed under: Photography: Figures,Photography: Light Painting — Tags: Art Modeling, Light Painting, Nudes, Technique — fred @ 23:18

Arch, 1996, photo by Fred Hatt

The word “photography” is derived from greek roots literally meaning “writing with light”. A light-sensitive chemical emulsion, or, these days, a light-sensitive silicon chip, is altered when it is exposed to light. An image focused through a lens, with an exposure timed by shutter, is only one possible way of using this process of writing with light. For example, you may be familiar with contact photograms, in which objects are placed on a photosensitive paper or film and the light darkens the area around the object, with the shadow of the object leaving a bright shape. In fact, some photo historians believe photograms were produced as early as around 1800. One of my favorite contemporary artists, Adam Fuss, uses the photogram technique to produce mysterious and fantastic tracings of energy.

Light painting is another one of those classic experimental photography techniques. In light painting photography, you work in the dark. The camera’s shutter is held open for a while, and you move a light source around, and wherever the light goes it gets recorded on the film or digital chip. Nowadays it’s very popular to draw things in the air with a handheld light, LED or glowstick. Back in the early 1990s there was a vogue for using fiber optics to apply light selectively to commercial still life arrangements to get a painterly look.

The lightpainter can walk right through the frame during exposure, and as long as the light is not directed at him or her, the lightpainter will not be recorded, because the camera records only light, not darkness.

I first started experimenting with light painting in photography of models in 1990 or thereabouts, but the early ones haven’t been scanned yet, so I’ll post those some other time. I was interested in the process because it bridged the gap between photography and painting or drawing. As in painting, the image is created by manual gestures over a finite period of time, but instead of making pigment marks on paper or canvas, one makes light marks, through a lens, on a photograph.

The first three examples here were made in 1996. The model was Kristin, an ex-gymnast and one of my great muses of that time. In the image above, the technique is used simply to place light selectively to explore the form of a pose. Of course, I would never know exactly what I was getting, as you can’t see the result at the time you’re doing it. In those days I didn’t see the results until after I’d hand-processed the black and white film and made test prints in a rental darkroom. This aspect of working blind, and the surprise and delight at discovering the outcome, was something I loved about this work. The light streaks in the lower area of the “arch” and in the upper right corner of the image above, are made by the hand-held light passing through the frame.

In the example below, I suspended a micro-Maglite from a string and dangled it above the model while twisting the string to cause the light to spin:

Smoke, 1996, photo by Fred Hatt

And in this one, I used a long camping lighter to draw streaks of flame around the model:

Triangle, 1996, photo by Fred Hatt

Below is a series of four triptychs, made by mounting black and white lightpainting prints together in a frame. These were made in 1998. The models are Laurie and Heather. Some of these images are sideways, and in some the models are on mirrors.

Earth, 1998, photo tryptich by Fred Hatt

Water, 1998, photo triptych by Fred Hatt

Air, 1998, photo triptych by Fred Hatt

Fire, 1998, photo triptych by Fred Hatt

See more of my black and white lightpaintings here, and color lightpaintings here.

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2009/05/02

Negative Space

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Poses — Tags: Art Modeling, Crayons, Figures, Nudes, Technique — fred @ 22:50

Claudia Curl, 2008, by Fred Hatt

“Negative space” is what we call the parts of the picture around and between the primary subject. In the image above, all the green and blue spaces are negative spaces. Here, because the subject goes beyond all four edges of the paper, and there’s a hollow in the middle, we have a balanced set of five shapes, no two alike. The bright color keeps them optically connected and emphasizes the pattern they form. The drawing below is a similar pose and composition, but the forward bend of the body gives the negative spaces around it a less balanced, more active feel. The hollow formed by the space between the front of the body and the arms and thighs is a more complex kind of negative space, with more distant parts of the body showing through the arch.

Lilli Grotto, 2009, by Fred Hatt

Negative spaces can be very useful in figuring out a pose on the page. Doubles poses, for instance, are notoriously challenging to draw. The spatial relationships are not just doubled, they’re multiplied. Here’s an analytical sketch of a doubles pose. You’ll notice an overall framing shape, lines showing the angular relationships between various points, and carefully delineated negative spaces, not just between the two bodies, but also between the contours of the bodies and the framing shape. Clearly seeing the negative spaces can help an artist to overcome some of the confusion that comes of trying to see the parts of the body as we think they should be, rather than as they are.

Marianna & Emma, 2009, by Fred Hatt

Certain poses are challenging to draw because of multiple crossings of limbs, or foreshortening, or because they’re seen from up close or at an unusual angle. Looking at the body itself can be quite confusing in these situations, but the negative spaces are simpler and their spatial relationship is clearer, so we can start from the negative spaces and then fill in the body details.

Stanley Folded, 2008, by Fred Hatt

Jiri Twisted, 2009, by Fred Hatt

The negative space can be developed to suggest the three-dimensional environment of the model, as in the drawing below, where there is a close vertical plane on the right and a more distant vertical plane on the left.

Theresa by Corner, 2009, by Fred Hatt

Or the negative space can be elaborated as a sort of complement or mirror of the positive space. In the drawing below, the folds in the fabric become almost biomorphic, reflecting the wrinkles and multiple roundnesses of the twisted feet.

Maria's Feet, 2007, by Fred Hatt

Clearly seeing negative space is about shifting the focus from presence to absence. Finding the figure by looking at the negative space is one of the many artistic applications of the Hermetic principle “As above, so below” or “As within, so without”. All reality exists on the cusp between interior and exterior, between past and future, or between any polarity you care to examine. To draw is to surf on the points of contact.

All drawings in this post are aquarelle crayon on paper, 50 x 70 cm.

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2009/03/23

Colorized

Filed under: Color,Figure Drawing: Process — Tags: Art Modeling, Color, Figures, Nudes, Portraits, Process, Technique — fred @ 23:36

Paul, 2008, by Fred Hatt

“Grisaille” is one of the classic “old master” painting techniques. Essentially, this means painting in black and white. Color can then be added by using layers of transparent color washes over the monochrome underpainting. The idea is that the white paint, reflecting through veils of color, gives a luminous effect that cannot be achieved by mixing opaque colored pigments. It also frees the artist to focus on form and light and shadow and to perfect these aspects of the image before turning to color.

I’ve often worked as a projectionist. Once I was showing a VHS videotape on a large screen through a video projector, and noticed that the image appeared to be a fairly sharp black and white picture overlaid with very loose veils of color. A person’s face would have all the important details but the color was a sort of pink smudge that blurred beyond the boundaries of the head. Technically, because color television technology evolved from and needed to remain compatible with black and white television, the video signal is a black and white (luminance) signal with a separate channel of color information (chroma). Particularly in a consumer format like VHS, the resolution level of the color information is very low, so the color distinctions are literally soft and blurry, but the sharp luminance signal makes it look fine, at least on a small screen. Enlargement via projection revealed the trick.

Color drawing is obviously different from oil painting or video technology, but understanding these things informed my color drawing technique. I saw the power of white to project light and black to define form, and I saw that if the brightness values of the image are well defined, the application of color can be extremely loose without damaging that definition. In fact, a loose hand with color seemed to have an invigorating effect on the drawings.

I see both values and color as perceptually relative phenomena. By that I mean that what matters is not the correspondence of the colors or values to some objective scale, but how much brighter or darker, warmer or cooler an area is in relation to its surroundings. Josef Albers’ classic Interaction of Color is the most thorough exploration of this relativity from an artist’s point of view.

The drawing above is essentially a grisaille sketch, using black and white crayons on gray paper, to which I have begun to add loose color, using only an orange and a blue to push different areas towards relative warmth or coolness. This could be further refined by adding layers of loose color, which would work like transparent washes, to tint the grays. Here the warm tones around the cheeks and nose and the cooler tones under the eyes may indicate variances in blood flow, but the warm tones above the eyes were probably seen because the major light source in those shadowy areas is reflection from the cheeks.

Here’s this process carried further, with multiple goings-over with scribblings of quite a few different colored crayons, and “washes” of overall color:

Keryn, 2008, by Fred Hatt

Shadows are always filled with complex reflected light. Some of it is bouncing off another part of the body, some of it is coming from secondary light sources or reflecting off floors, walls, or other surfaces in the area. It’s incredibly subtle, but again here the relativistic conception of value and color is helpful.

Leticia, 2008, by Fred Hatt

A more abstract approach to the technique, exaggerating the differences by leaving the colors more separated and “pure”, and virtually eliminating the overall wash effect, is perhaps even more effective. Viewed from a distance, the coloration looks strikingly realistic, considering that no conventional “flesh tones” have been used in the drawing above.

These portrait examples are from three hour sessions, so there’s ample time to play with color, but sometimes I apply the same principles to quicker figure sketches.

Colin standing back, 2009, by Fred Hatt

On the one above the background colors are also a very loose indication of the model’s environment, as he was standing on a warm-toned wooden floor in a room with cool-toned windowlight illuminating the walls.

The next example essentially ignores the surface colors of the body and uses intensified hues to depict the variations in the light illuminating the form. There is white windowlight from above and behind the body, cool fill in the upper shadows, and warm reflections from the floor beneath her.

Reclining Izaskun, 2009, by Fred Hatt

All the drawings shown in this post are made with Caran d’Ache aquarelle crayons on gray Fabriano paper, 70cm x 50 cm.

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2009/03/15

Variations

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Process — Tags: Art Modeling, Crayons, Figures, Nudes, Portraits, Process, Technique — fred @ 20:37

Welcome to my new blog. As an artist who works in diverse forms, I think this is the medium I’ve always needed. Here I can mix drawings, photographs, video clips and writings, in a venue that’s expansive and broadly available. I have over twenty years of archives to draw on. Much of my work has been seen by a few people at an underground exhibit or performance somewhere, but I think some of it deserves a chance to be seen again. And there’s a constant stream of new work from my persistent habits of drawing and photography. If you like something you see here, bookmark this space and I promise there will be fresh material regularly. And please help me build an audience by sharing what you see here with anyone who may appreciate it.

For my first post, a few new figure drawings. I practice drawing from direct observation of live models as an ongoing regular practice. It’s a meditation, an exploration, and a workout for eyes and hands. These two back studies were made in a private session by commission in my studio a few weeks ago, with a model who wishes to remain anonymous.

Back Study #1: Convex, 2009, by Fred Hatt

Back Study #2: Concave, 2009, by Fred Hatt

They’re both drawn using my usual Caran d’Ache aquarelle crayons on black paper, 76 cm x 51 cm. Both are straight-on studies of the back in symmetrical poses, using the same color palette. Yet they’re strikingly different. Convex uses shading and exaggeration of actual observed differences in the colors of light and shadow to depict the wonderfully complex and subtle structure of the human back. Concave simplifies the depiction by just outlining the areas that light reveals in the model’s back. It’s a technique often used in drawing quick gestural poses, when there’s no time to do shading. The dividing line between light and shadow is treated as another contour, a simple line. It’s a kind of indefinite anatomy, yet the sureness and clarity of the lines makes it something definite. The different colors separate the resulting shapes, and like clouds or Rorschach blots, these outlined shapes may evoke different images in the mind.

The idea my model and I were working with in the studio was to look at the difference between a rounded, closed pose, and an angular, open one. There’s a difference in mood, too, with Convex having, for me, a feeling of sadness, while Concave feels strong and confident. The change in technique was an intuitive choice in the moment, responding to the differences in what I saw with a change of drawing technique.

Here’s another look at varying the technique in figure drawing. I’m the monitor responsible for overseeing a weekly three-hour long-pose session at Minerva Durham’s legendary Spring Studio in New York. It’s an open session where a mix of students and seasoned artists come to practice drawing from nude models. In this particular session, we do one set of quick warmup poses, and then the model takes a single pose (with breaks every 20 minutes) for the remainder of the class. I draw very quickly, and sometimes a long class has its pitfalls. A drawing that starts out simple and strong can get lost in overdevelopment. So last monday I made four different drawings during the session, all from the same model, in the same pose, and drawn from the same observational position. Our model was the wonderful Betty. All of these are 70 cm x 50 cm, aquarelle crayons on paper. My first attempt was drawn mostly with the side of the crayons:

Betty 1a, 2009, by Fred Hatt

This one captures an interesting combination of softness and strength, with perhaps a hint of sadness but also pride and confidence. One of the other artists in the class said I shouldn’t do much more on this one, and I agreed, so I flipped it over and did another one on the back:

Betty 1b, 2009, by Fred Hatt

Here I focused in close on the face, using only a combination of contour lines and cross-contour hatching. This kind of drawing is like carving – it feels like cutting planes and angles into space. This one was my favorite of the day, and I knew it would suffer from being worked any further, so I got another sheet of paper and started again:

Betty 2a, 2009, by Fred Hatt

When I started this third one I fully intended to work it into a nice, finished full-color rendering. The body was off to a good start, but the head was disproportionally large. It’s very easy for that to happen, since the face has a lot more intricate details close together than other parts of the body and it’s hard to get them down in a small space. I tried to fix it – you can see I used a gray crayon close to the paper color to cover over the top of the head and overdrew the upper part of the face smaller and lower than its original position. But I can’t get away with that much correcting without ruining the clarity of the drawing, so I flipped this one over and started again. By now the remaining class time was too short to do something really polished:

Betty 2b, 2009, by Fred Hatt

So here I tried to expand the sculptural approach of the second try to a fuller head and torso view.

When I looked at these later, it struck me that they’re more interesting as a series than they are as individual pieces. Because they’re not too finished they reveal a lot about how I analyze what I see, and the differences among them bring out the rough strengths of each. It’s analagous to what a composer might do in a theme and variations, taking what may seem a simple melodic motif and turning it every which way and inside and out to reveal its glorious complexity.

If this stirs any response in you, please leave a comment! Thanks.

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DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

2009/07/03

Alabaster & Obsidian

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2009/05/10

Painting with Light

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2009/05/02

Negative Space

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2009/03/23

Colorized

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2009/03/15

Variations

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