Learning to keep it simple

As an aspiring figure painter and student at Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia, PA for the past year and 1/2, I have probably sketched and painted the beautiful human figure hundreds if not thousands of times. During my first year of school, I was working in charcoal 6 hours a day, 5 days a week.

This year, as a lucky “Level 2” student, studies have moved from charcoal to paint. So, as I work in this new medium, I confess there is a bit of a feeling of, yet again, being a total “noob” (newbie) at something. Good grief this can be overwhelming sometimes! At this stage in life, one would normally expect to be proficient in a profession and even gaining recognition for that work. Call it dumb luck or ignorance or unfettered bliss but I cannot express how much I love learning this new skill. This is some of the hardest work I have ever done in my life and yet I can’t tell you how much I love it.

The fundamental principles we are learning are:
1. Find large simple shapes first
2. Use straight lines and angles
3. Push the gesture
4. Keep an eye on proportions
5. Use the least amount of materials and information to accurately represent what I see
6. After blocking in the initial gesture, step back and squint to help to simplify the complex figure into abstract shapes and forms
7. Look for anatomical references including the top of the head and the bottom of the feet, the midline, the sternum, clavicles, and pubic symphysis (halfway point).

The beginning phase of this process takes my head into a space that I find difficult to describe but if I could experience that space on demand and package it up so I could share it with you I would. It is a transformative and transcendent place where I only see the model before me and the easel between the model and me. No matter what distractions I encounter (barking dogs in nearby apartments in the school building, sirens from ambulances or voices of monitors in nearby studios saying, “Model’s posing” which is a way to call classmates back to their easels after a break and ask the model to return to the model stand), I am not feeling my physical body in this moment in time.

As I step back to gauge the accuracy of the gesture and proportions of the first lines I paint, I attempt to switch to a more analytical side of my mind to assess the work that I have done. This stage is the most difficult for me because I tend to ‘shoot from the hip’ and not take the time to critically assess what needs to be corrected. Several different instructors have told me to use the model’s anatomical landmarks to navigate this phase just as ancient mariners used constellations to navigate the sea. With time and practice, and a bamboo stick and marking the half way point on the canvas, I am slowly training my hand to paint what my eye is seeing. I have also started to look at people I pass on the street and make a mental note of their anatomical landmarks, just for fun!

At this stage of learning, I am only spending two 20 minute sessions with each painting. Then we wipe out our work and begin a new pose and painting. This helps me lose the affinity I might be developing for a particular painting and it also is helping me refine my skills with a healthy dose of skepticism when assessing my work. Thankfully, I have incredible teachers swooping in to keep me on task by saying things like, “Keep it simple” or asking me the most basic questions such as, “What are you doing?” If I get that question in the beginning phase of the painting, there’s no telling how long it takes me to switch back into reality to be able to answer that question. So in that moment, I may answer by saying, “What do you think I need to be doing?” Typically, I got some solid advice to clean up the contour lines and shadow shapes. Then I try to go back into the task of painting what I see.

This week I had a moment of real clarity on something very, very fundamental. There is no doubt in my mind that stepping back and squinting helps me see simpler shapes on the model. In the past, however, I have stepped back, squinted and then stepped back up to the easel, looked at the model again in front of the easel and painted. I changed this process ever so slightly this week by making the decision (after receiving advice from a Teaching Fellow) to step back, squint and use what I see from that point of view to make a mark on my canvas. Whoa! This is hard to do because I am very tempted to peak at the model one more time once I am within painting distance of the easel. But what I found was that my ability to see errors more clearly improved. And, even though it initially seemed ‘slow’ to step back, squint, step forward and make a mark, it seemed that the marks I was making were much more accurate than in the past (as demonstrated by the study in this paragraph).

Stay tuned as I continue to see how to keep it simple in this amazing journey of learning to paint the unique and beautiful human figure!