Painting the Female Figure Magda

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Back in October, I wrote in a blog post about my oil painting of Magda. And I shared with you some of the process of the painting I was creating as a study of a nude woman’s back. Here is the finished work.

”Study of Magda”
80 x 40 cm
Oil on Canvas
By Kelly Borsheim 2012
Available, just ask…

Also, a gentle reminder that if you enjoy the art of sculpture and are intrigued by the vision and work of my friend and artist Vasily Fedorouk, please see this once-in-a-lifetime offer to receive more art with his sculpture in this special offer in my latest art newsletter: http://www.borsheimarts.com/news/2013_01_GuggenheimSerraBilbao.htm

Painting from Life

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I spend three hours every weekday morning painting from a live model named Magda. She is really lovely. I have three canvases going on: one seated pose on Mondays, one half-seated/half-standing pose on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and then a standing view of her back on Thursdays and Fridays. The first two projects are being done on a white campitura (field colour) or in this case, a white-primed canvas with nothing added. The last project is on a toned canvas. There are different approaches one takes in a painting depending on these kinds of early choices and I wanted to learn what my preferences might be, and more importantly, why.

I first sketched in the gesture of her standing figure, using S and C curves to put in the romance of the piece. Later I tightened up my drawing by adding the straight lines to define specific angles (what I think of as the architecture). I want to give the figure enough architecture for solidity and strength of the figure, but keep enough romance in her so that she does not appear stiff and hopefully will elicit some emotion in the viewer.

For the sketch, I used raw umber and just enough white to cut the warmth of the thinned umber. I need to learn to use paint when I paint. That sounds stupid and logical, but I tend to use very little paint and this leads to a thinned, glazed color. Glazing usually makes a color look warmer than an opaquely painted paint. If I use more paint and get my tones, hue, and chroma correct, then even as the oil paint becomes transparent over time, my painting will look as I intended it to look, even after many years.

You may see some light patches in the campitura, especially down near the leg on the left, where the model carries her weight. This is because I must improve my drawing skills. I had the knee too low and used mineral spirits to remove the paint on my original sketch. It also removed the background color. You may also see that I chose to raise the front part of the knee by scribbling in dark background below the knee, lifting it in the process.

The background comes first since I must relate the skin colors to it. It is amazing how a line drawing that looks proportionally well done, looks very different in paint. Mine always seem to grow, in a similar fashion to how I experience “stone expansion” when carving. That is the phenomenon in which I remove plenty of marble in a day’s work, but the next morning the sculpture seems to have grown over night and I see how much more must come off. This work never gets dull! Really.

After the background, I start to add the lights in the flesh. I will do several layers of this, in a large part because of the transparency of oil paint. I want my lights to remain light, not darken over the years to become closer to the darker campitura underneath them. Timing is everything and I have tried to keep a pace on this project that allows the paint time to dry before I take on the next steps.

The last step you see here is my trying to create the forms of each part of the figure. I want to portray the volume of the rib cage and the hips, the head, and the arm and . . . you get the idea. I want them to have the proper amount of turning so that you can distinguish between a cylinder, an egg, and a more boxy mass. You may notice that even though I had designed the shadow shapes in my drawing, I painted over the spine in an effort to make the rib cage one united form. The big picture is always more important than details and everything is related.

Thank you for reading and following my artistic journey. Please do not forget to take a look at the recently available sculptures by my dear friend Vasily Fedorouk: http://www.borsheimarts.com/vasilyfedorouk.htm

Florence Italy Figure Art

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),
I have not decided whether it is because I have no shame or whether it is just because I am a horrible liar that I am about to share with you what I am. You may remember my blog post on 15 January 2012 about my struggles to learn how to figure paint here in Florence, Italy. I often feel like a bit of a fraud when kind people remark that creating figure art comes so natural to me. It does not. I work and work and work at it. No lie.

Despite the fact that after my first day of frustration and the next day Maestro John Angel gave me a compliment in front of the whole class, I am still trying to overcome my first bad day on this painting of Federica. John Angel does watch his students paint; even if he is standing far enough away that you think he is not looking at what you are doing. Of course, I also get lost in my own brain when I am drawing and am not much aware of my surroundings.

At some point, he recommended that the class do as I was doing – cross referencing relationships using triangles. I have always felt that the more relationships I make (or notice) between specific points, the more my drawing will be successful. In this case, I had used my knitting needle to determine the position of the hand based on the line formed by a point in the shoulder and the belly button… or something similar that escapes my memory now.

I have failed somehow to get the gesture I once was happy with and I have yet to return to that first drawing that I erased during my frustration spell. Still, with refinement of the shapes I am designing, I hope to “scootch” my way back to something depicting emotion.

So, are you ready? Scary gets less so, I hope…

Image 1: really horrifying … no gesture, bad proportions. The only emotion I feel when looking at this is embarrassment.

Image 2: I am attempting to get the face, but it is still too narrow and poorly done. Her belly is way too round, and … need I go on?

Image 3: Frustrated with my own work, I chose to move on through the process. Here I have left behind the sketching in raw umber in favor of adding the light tones using Titanium White and Ivory Black. I have started the Big Form Modeling, the beginning of the process of creating the illusion of three dimensions.

Image 4: More shape refining, especially in the face, is starting to occur. My figure is looking better, but is still off on too many proportions.

Image 5: Another reason that I am here is to learn to be a painter. As John Angel has been lecturing us, poets use words, musicians use notes, and painters are in love with shapes. But also, we love the quality of PAINT! My tendency is to use too little. Ironic since it was originally the “squishability” factor of oil paint that led me to want to play with clay.

Image 6: By this time, Frederica had cut her hair into a shorter do that is quite attractive. In my attempt to refine the shapes in the face and still use this particular style of a grisaille (white and black) painting with a brown shadow tone, I have added yellow ochre to my raw umber to give some opacity to the browns.

Image 7: Still, so many problems with my shapes! However, I am starting to feel that I am beginning to capture her emotion of at least boredom. Sometimes the model looks teary eyed. She said this happens when her contact lenses start to bother her, but I actually enjoy the sad and pensive expression this gives her. It suits the slumped over posture as well, do you not agree?

And since I prefer not to end this session with any ugliness, here is one of the more subtle skies over my beloved Florence, Italy. Some days, I happened to walk out of the studio at just the most beautiful hour! Enjoy.

Abstraction of the Real Figure

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),
It is sometimes a strange thing to understand -- this getting to realism in art through abstraction. The idea basically is that the artist is not just copying from a model. She is creating a design based on what she sees in the model. I want to capture a gesture, for gesture is a physical expression of a thought or idea.

The following oil painting “Neela” is one of my favorites of my early paintings from life. I cannot believe it is still in my collection, but then I usually keep it in my home for my own enjoyment. This is an older work and therefore quite affordable.

Neela, the model, was sitting and leaning forward a bit as she read a book during her pose time. I often enjoy working on the extreme edges of the model room, as well as working in the shadows with backlighting. And I love backs. You may see here that even if you can recognize this image as a woman’s back, it is really made up of abstract shapes of light and dark. The triangles of the shoulder blades give you an idea of symmetry in the anatomy, yet are not exact repeats of form. You may enjoy the circular shapes, the pointier ones, and hopefully the long swirling dark shape that widens as it gets closer to its bottom and denotes most of the woman’s spine.

The cool thing about this process is that one can achieve a believable human figure that does not look like a photograph. I hope that you enjoy “Neela.”

Songbird Pastel Art

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I have (almost) always felt privileged when a person includes me in a personal part of her life. I am referring to those kinds of things that two people share in an often quiet moment in life, such as when viewing a powerful sunset or one-to-one learning situation. This next pastel artwork is a painting that I did of my friend Hafiza in her home near Florence, Italy.

We were both sitting on Hafiza’s bed talking, while Hafiza was slowing gathering a warm blanket over her lap and legs. She had paused to formulate her thoughts before speaking and then, I saw her turn her head towards the window. She had heard a bird singing outside for just a moment and I realized almost simultaneously that we had not heard any birds in a while and also that the light coming through the window and falling onto my friend was truly lovely. I asked her to stay still for a moment.

I am having a good time with pastels and enjoying the transitions areas, such as blending pinks and oranges into the folds of the curtain behind my friend, as well as the grey parts of her backlit hair. In the second detail image, you can see the radiator and bed. Although I tend to work in a realistic style, I am trying to do this with fewer strokes. And I was trying to depict the texture of fringe vs. the other soft parts of the blanket.

Maybe you did not hear the bird’s song, but I hope that I was able to depict a feeling on intimacy and peace, and maybe even sharing the joy of spending quiet time with a dear friend.

“Songbird”

11.5" x 17”
pastel painting on Wallis Museum-Grade paper
copyright 2010 Kelly Borsheim
Please inquire on price – the work is currently framed with
Museum Glass (no glare means that you can SEE the work you want to enjoy)

Original Oil Painting Mario The Naked Gondolier

Cari Amici,
Back in November, I did a sketch in a white pencil on a dark charcoal paper of an Italian model named Mario. Another “light emerging from darkness” image of a fairly classical style standing pose of a nude male figure.

I liked the shapes so much that I decided to make this study of Mario into one of my Naked Gondoliers painting series. (Mario is actually the first one completed in this painting series.) And so, I have painted this lovely male figure in oil on canvas in my favorite sepia tones: Mario, The Naked Gondolier. I wanted just a hint of Venice in the image, so there is a dark curve of a bridge behind Mario’s head and a gondola under his feet. There is a slight hint of light rippling in dark water to the right. I love the mysterious qualities of this image and may keep exploring these ideas.

Mario measures 45 cm x 30 cm (approximately 17.5 x 12 inches). This oilo sul tela (oil on canvas) will sell for $600, plus shipping and insurance from Italia $25.
I take PayPal here or I can send you an invoice via e-mail.

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And for those who are drawn to the original pencil drawing of the standing male figure, “Study for Mario The Naked Gondolier” is also available. The figure is about 42 centimeters (just over 16 inches) tall. I drew in the light shapes only with a white pencil on a dark charcoal grey Canson paper.

The paper for framing purposes is around 47 x 30 cm, not counting what would be under the mat and frame. The drawing is signed and dated 7 November 2007.

The original drawing of Mario sells for $200, plus $20 shipping and handling.

And again, thank for your making the dream possible.