Fourth Monday Susan Speaks

This artist's approach

By Susan C. Price

Speaking of this artist's approach to a painting (as our dear editor suggested i do), well, uh, model sits, poses for 5 or 7 or 10 minutes, i assess my interest in the possibilities of the pose and my "in my hand" media....
    this usually happens in a painting workshop to which i go each thursday evening, where they have a model...
    I used to get friends to model for me...but they usually expected conversation at the same time...and i found i cant do that. They also tended to expect the result to be their view of their best selves....and that's not what i am trying to do. Art is personal.

• if i'm just sitting there with pens ...i dont want to get up and get water and get paint & brushes out...
• does the pose, or a part of it, work on small paper, cardboard, or large format paper?
• am i interested in the shapes of the whole pose, or part of it?
• am i close enough to see the face with my aging eyes and the poor light?
• ok. lets draw/paint an outline (usually) in black or dark blue or purple or charcoal or wax pencil
• model is usually mostly skin color (white, nude, brown...), but i never want to start with that...i dont want to work with a traditional representation...i am trying to make a picture that interests & pleases ME...so what hue (blues, greens, purples?) am i going to start with?...for the lightest parts or the darkest?
• then...i just sort of ...do something....

    so, if that's magic to you...then that's "how the 'magic' happens" :-)

one of those quick, lucky small paintings...
this is a beautiful pal, but she did look puzzled at that moment

    remember that the one drawing or painting you are seeing is the best of the 20-some i might have made in an evening or series of evenings...all the others got thrown out...and there are none for many nights/weeks/years
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Copyright © 2013 by Susan C. Price

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