David Kassan Workshop

I was lucky enough to go to a three day David Kassan Drawing Workshop in early December 2011 at the Townsend Atelier in Chattanooga TN.

The weekend started with a free public drawing demo by David at the Hunter Museum of Art on Thursday night.

Artist Mia Bergeron helping David set up.

David with his initial block in using pan pastels.

David uses binoculars for seeing detail and true shapes. I've seen demos of his using them before on line and I always thought they would be used at the end for details but they are actually used early on, to see areas of dark and light more accurately.

Here he is using a mahl stick with a hook on the end that can rest on the top of the drawing when he isn't using it.

Alia El-Bermani and Cindy Procious enjoying the demo.

David's finished drawing from the demo which was about three hours long. You could tell he really wanted to work on it longer. He called it "cursory," but of course we were all impressed.

Early Friday morning at the Atelier, David spent a bit of time setting up the model, experimenting with a dark or light background and adjusting the light. The class was structured around him demonstrating for three hours in the morning and then after a lunch break the class drew for four hours. 

In this close-up you can see how he outlines shadow shapes to define them and hatches in layers, building up the values.

 

There were 14 people in the class, David arranged the easels so that everyone had  good view of the model and then we drew numbers, with the lower numbers choosing their easels first. I was number 13 but still had an interesting view,  although not one I might have chosen if I'd gotten a smaller number- a straight profile.

From my spot, you can see the light set up and my first clunky block in with the pan pastels. We were working on a heavy, smooth, medium gray card stock paper.

The pan pastels are scrubbed into the paper with a paper towel, so we were building up layer upon layer of black charcoal pencils of varying hardness and white charcoal pencil. Using very sharp pencils, "Sharp pencils make sharp drawings".

In this one you can see the eraser marks, where an eraser is used as a drawing implement. Even though we were working on toned paper every inch of the paper is covered in charcoal. Some schools of thought leave the toned paper as a mid-value but David actually mixes the white and black charcoal to create a full range of gray scale.

My finished drawing. About 11 or 12 hours total.

Here are a couple close-ups. It is a very subtle cross hatching technique. I could never have seen this kind of detail with out the binoculars. I did have a tough time with them the first day but kind of adjusted to them by the second day.

One of the best parts of the weekend was reuniting with a few of my WPW friends! We worked hard, ate well, socialized plenty and slept little. A perfect storm.

Me, Cindy Procious, David, Mia Bergeron, Alia El-Bermani

Alia with her gorgeous finished drawing.

Mia with her fabulous finished drawing.

The Townsend Atelier was a great place to have a workshop like this. Stan and Peggy Townsend were very organized and did everything possible to make us feel welcome. They have a busy class schedule, painting, drawing and sculpture, and an interesting assortment of fine art materials, check it out!

You can sign-up to receive Townsend Atelier emails on this page. Talks are in the works... looks like I will be teaching a two-day painting workshop later this year. I will keep you posted.

I highly recommend David Kassan's workshops. He has a DVD of his drawing method so if you don't get as lucky as we were to have him in driving distance check it out. David is a generous teacher and freely answered questions about his work. I learned a lot about his method with charcoal and about capturing one area with absolute accuracy, using that area as a map legend to base the rest of the drawing on. 

The Three Fates - Completed

The Three Fates, 30x40, oil on panel

This painting is for Principle Gallery's April 2012 show,  "The Expedition and Beyond" 

Work by 13 artists, introduced through the Women Painting Women phenomenon of 2010, who continue to be challenged and inspired by each other. 

We were introduced through the Women Painting Women Blog, the Robert Lange Studios Invitational Show of Nov. 2010 and really got to know each other during the Expedition, a painting retreat on Sullivan's Island SC. Here is a preview of a catalog about this experience and The Expedition and Beyond.

This allegorical painting of Diane Feissel, Sadie Valeri and Alia El-Bermani as The Three Fates is my tribute to them and the generosity of spirit I find in this group of 14 artists. 

The Three Fates are Greek goddesses who spin, measure and cut the thread of life. Together they each represent a part or portion of the whole.

Rather than spinning, I've changed Diane's job to rolling out the canvas, Alia is measuring it and Sadie is cutting it.

I wanted to have them doing something, building a canvas, that would show them as being the supporters of women painters and the art community that they are. I chose traditionally masculine tools for them to be using.

I've also included items for each of them that is personal to their work. The personal items are not necessarily feminine things, wax paper, weeds or animals but in the incarnation in which I've chosen to use them they become feminine, jewelry, clothing or hair adornment.

As women artists we work and compete in a man's world without losing touch with who we are as women.

Notice Alia is wearing flowering weeds in her hair, a shout out to her recently completed series of paintings honoring southern weeds. Sadie is wearing a ruff made of wax paper to represent her beautiful wax paper still-life paintings. Diane is wearing a bracelet of a cat cameo in tribute to her Fabrication series about animals.

I frequently use symbols in my work, as in this current body at Peterson-Cody Gallery. I include things if they make sense to me and not worry too much if other people will get them and usually it works out okay. It seems if you are talking about universal human themes, since we all have those in common, most people will relate to the work.

The Three Fates - In Progress

Here's a complete list of artists that will be in the April show at Principle Gallery:
Mia Bergeron,
Linda Tracey Brandon,
Rachel Constantine,
Alia El-Bermani,
Diane Feissel,
Catherine Prescott,
Cindy Procious,
Shannon Runquist,
Kate Stone,
Terry Strickland,
Stefani Tewes,
Alexandra Tyng,
Sadie Valeri

A Cup of Kindness and Blogging in the New Year

A couple of bloggers have written about my work at the start of this New Year. I had an interview with artist Tricia Ratliff from Agile Arts Journal. Tricia captures useful and inspiring reference materials for art lovers on her blog.

She is particularly taken with The Incognito Project and my Awakening Series, which she ties together in an interesting way.


Tricia's own work is beautiful and her posts are informative, touching on many aspects of art: process, shows, work, history and interviews with other artists.

Cedrus Amplexu by Tricia Cherrington Ratliff, 16x20, oil on linen

My daughter-in-law, writer Amy Leigh Strickland included me in her list of 11 People Who had a Great 2011.

Amy is an author, an education grad student, roleplayer, actress and derby girl. She had quite a year for herself, starting grad school and publishing her first book, Olympia Heights.

She also helped start our family publishing company, Matter Deep Publishing, and wrote a second book, the novella- Kissing Corpses, soon to be published.

Happy New Year, here's to an awesome 2012 and to dear friends everywhere!
For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne!

The Three Fates - In Progress

My current obsession is a painting I'm working on for Principle Gallery's April 2012 show,  "The Expedition and Beyond"

Work by 14 artists, introduced through the Women Painting Women phenomenon of 2010, who continue to be challenged and inspired by each other.

The Three Fates, 30x40, oil on panel, (in progress)

This is an allegorical painting of Diane Feissel, Sadie Valeri and Alia El-Bermani as The Three Fates. In real life these models are artists and the Women Painting Women bloggers. The painting doesn't even have one complete pass of color yet so I still have many days left go on it.

I've included items for each of them that is personal to their work.

Alia is wearing flowering weeds in her hair, a shout out to her recently completed series of paintings honoring southern weeds. Sadie is wearing a ruff made of wax paper to represent her beautiful wax paper still-life paintings. Diane is wearing a bracelet of a cat cameo in tribute to her Fabrication series about animals.

Diane, Sadie, Me and Alia after the Robert Lange Studios Women Painting Women Invitational, November, 2011.

It's making me very happy to be working on this painting! I met all these women through the Women Painting Women experience, and since have become good friends. I'm so grateful to them for modeling.

The four of us, along with 10 others will be showing work that we did on a painting retreat in Charleston, SC in the fall of 2010, and work that was inspired by our trip. (a complete list with links to all the artists in my next post about the finished painting and show)

Here's the set up in my studio, where I work from a monitor and from prints. I set my palette up on a French easel to ease the strain on neck and shoulders. An added benefit is that the light on the palette is the same as the painting when it's set up this way.

This is a close-up of my palette. I generally pre-mix at least 4 strings of flesh colors, working back and forth between the strings to get small nuance of color.

Here's a reflection on how the WPW reminded me of my senior show "I've Gone Full Circle".

There is a preview of the catalog for the Expedition and Beyond. Here's a post about the Expedition.

WPW and the 2010 invitational in the press. 

More pictures when its complete.

Time Person of the Year, 2011, The Protester

Call it Zeitgeist, which according to Wiki is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."

Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.

The term is a loanword from German Zeit – "time" (English "tide" and "time") and Geist – "spirit" (English "ghost")

I've been watching the protests all over the world this year and thought this was a brilliant choice for the person of the year. 

I also thought it was interesting because of the painting I did earlier this year, "The Activist, The Incognito Project". Did my model and I tap into this Zeitgeist?

The Activist, The Incognito Project, 24x18, oil on panel

The Incognito Project is a collaborative effort between myself and my models where they choose to share their alter-egos or secret selves.

This model choose to be stripped of everything except those things most important to her.

My model is not getting tear gassed or pepper sprayed but in her own quiet way has shared her concerns with the world.

Here are a few other works from the contemporary art world, and about social concerns that I find thought provoking.

Graydon Parrish  -  The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy:  September 11, 2001  - 8 X 18 ft., oil on canvas

Carl Dobsky, The Lotos Eater, Oil on Linen, 24 x 60 inches, 2009 

Banksy

Banksy

War Protester Sign

Max Ginsburg, Torture Abu Ghraib, 46x32, oil on canvas, 2009  

Check out this photo essay portfolio of protesters from around the world by photographer Peter Hapak done for Time Magazine.

You can see a post with close-ups of The Activist, here.

And other posts about The Incognito Project here.