Mitzuk’s Musings

Mar262014

Sketchbook Smear Relief and Some Doctor Who Fan Art

I wanted practice drawing people. What better way than to combine learning with fan art of Doctor Who? In the past when I’ve kept a sketch book the pencil would rub off on the adjacent page. This has always frustrated me. Capturing a likeness can be frustrating, why compound...

Mar202014

Online Drawing Practice Resource

Nothing beats drawing from life, but let’s say you live out in the middle of nowhere and are sick of drawing yourself and your surroundings. Or maybe you need something during the week, between that weekend drawing co-op you like to attend. Perhaps you’ve tried the good ‘ol internet...

Mar122014

Portrait Study – Paint

Last week I posted about how I transfer a drawing to canvas. This week, paint! I’m using oils and decided to use a limited palette. Initially I was going to use Ivory Black for the cools but the flesh was looking dead so I added French Ultramarine Blue. Basically...

Mar52014

Portrait Study – Transfer the Drawing

This is a follow up from last week’s post about my portrait study using Russian Sauce. I went back in to the drawing with a fat tortillion and smoothed out the background. I’m liking it much better. Next I transferred the drawing to a prepared canvas panel. Materials Used...

Feb272014

Portrait Study – Russian Sauce

I teach a portrait class Tuesday evenings so when I’m not helping students, I’m helping myself by working on this head study. This was a great opportunity to experiment with Yarka Russian Sauce. What fun! I love the darks I’m getting. This all started with my interest in Valentin...

Jan292014

Posthumous Portrait

As a present for my husband, I painted a posthumous portrait of his mother. Kinda tricky. I had to work from photos, and my memories and impressions of her. Step 1 Transfer the photo reference as a line drawing/tracing to the canvas and start painting. I thought this would...

Jan292014

Experiment: Camera Lucida

So a couple guys did a Kickstarter. They created a modern version of the camera lucida: the NeoLucida. I was curious so I chipped in. Backstory David Hockney, in his book “Secret Knowledge,” proposed that many of the old masters used optics as they came available. This ruffled some...

Dec312013

Portrait Practice

I’ve been studying Valentin Serov’s portraits. He was a Russian artist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I love his dancing, searching line mixed in with bold marks and wanted to experiment with that. A few Saturdays ago I had some extra time and got to attend the...