AdvancedStudioMethods2020: Ideas about Figure drawing

when I did not have a model, I could always paint myself

Gesture drawings from the Museum, these are Rodin, the one on the right is Eve and Adam. The idea, in drawing at the museum, is not to make a perfect copy, but to be there with the piece and study it, by drawing.

After I went to art school (The Art Students League of New York), I became an illustrator. My first full color picture book was about a cat...after that, whenever an art director or editor had a book about cats, they would call me.

One project I liked to do with my students was to look at the artists Gustav Klimt and Mary Cassatt. We studied their use of patterns. We did some preliminary drawings and paintings just of patterns. Then we set up a little photo studio and they took nice black and white photographs of themselves or someone else. Using that reference, they had to make a carefully modeled painting in some part of the piece, and the rest would just be pattern.

Klimt, Mary Cassatte..

Examples of student work

William Kentridge

Amy Sherald

Leonardo

I also painted my kids. This is Jakob, we lived on the 32nd floor of an apartment building in Manhattan and had a parakeet named Ishmael, that we had found on the street.

I also painted my students as a demonstration and for fun.

I painted the ballerina when I was in high school. It one a prize at the county fair and my parents put it in a frame. My high school art teacher set up a model and we painted with oil paint!