Tag: composition

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Overlap Between Media – Drawing and Painting

This week I started setting up my studio for painting.   It’s been a long time since I did any significant painting, especially in oils, which is what I intend to use, for the most part.  I have some ancient paints, which I think will be adequate while I re-acquaint myself with color mixing.

I well-remember the elements and principles of composition.  After all, I taught art in a high school for 3 years.  The introductory course focussed on the elements and principles of design:  line, shape, size, position, color, texture, and density, and harmony, balance, and rhythm.  But color can be immensely complex.  Within that single element are hues, values, intensities, shades, tints, compliments, keys, analagous, primary, secondary, warm, cool, transparent, opaque, permanent, tertiary, and my goodness, stop, I’m already intimidated!

I had done most of the corrections of my drawings in the main part of my house, and my studio was just recently renovated, so it was not set up at all.  I carried the studio furniture into the new space — easels, taborets, drafting tables, and desks.  It feels very strange in there with nothing on the walls yet, and the tables and easels are empty.

My only injury was a bad whack on the top of my head when the post of my big easel smacked into a dropped ceiling and stopped me in my tracks.  (Note to self.)

I still attended the weekly figure drawing session at Studio b.   Our model this week had been in Europe this past fall.  She told me she had shown my website posts all over Europe, which pleased me hugely.  I have no idea how many people actually read my posts, or how long they spend looking at my drawings.  My webmaster is counting it all, but I haven’t asked him what the numbers are.  At this point, I am just happy to share the process.  Below are two warm-up drawings with multiple poses, and two longer poses.

 Click on any image for a larger view.
 

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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A Photo-Shoot in Chattanooga

Hollyhocks, Reliance, TN

Since my favorite subjects for photography are outdoor nature scenes and landscapes, I was thrilled to be asked to shoot photos and video of stand-up paddlers in Chattanooga, TN, where every shot is scenic.  I was shooting for Leslie Kolovich, host of the Stand Up Paddle Radio Show, for advance publicity for  Stand-Up Paddling events newly added to the  Chattanooga River Rocks Festival schedule this year in October.

My approach to nature photography is to watch where the light is doing something extraordinary and then to capture that.  Rarely do I do much with post processing, other than perhaps crop a little here or there to help the composition.

The photo at left was taken at the Webb Brothers country store at Reliance, Tennessee, on the bank of the Hiwassee River where the stand-up paddlers were navigating some whitewater.  The sun was shining from above and behind the hollyhocks, rendering the petals semi-transparent, and offering rim lighting on the fuzz on the stem and buds.  I didn’t enhance anything digitally, but I did trim the right side just a little, to make the composition more interesting.  Otherwise, no need to improve on Mother Nature!

Leslie interviewed me after the show.  The following link opens the podcast, and my segment is well into the second half of the podcast:

http://www.30aradioshows.org/stand-up-paddle-boarding/chattanooga-tennessee-river-rocks-festival-on-the-road-with-leslie-kolovich/

The story and some of the other photos are posted in The Stand Up Paddle Radio Show website, at http://www.supradioshow.com/2011/06/chattanooga/

The “On the Road With Leslie” is published with my photos in the print magazine, The Standup Journal.  Here’s a sample (link).

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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Thinking about Composition in Figure Drawing

Having spent nearly two years improving my skills at figure drawing, I think I would like to spend more time thinking about how the figure is presented on the paper, which begins to determine whether the piece can stand alone as a composition.  When I look back at the bulk of my work, the pieces that appeal the most to me have an unfinished quality, in that perhaps I did not try to capture the figure in its entirety.  I’d like to preserve that quality.

This week at Studio b.’s figure drawing session, we had an exquisitely beautiful model, and I found that I still need a lot of work on portraiture, as I think I failed miserably to get a likeness let alone to show how pretty she is.  However, I like the pieces I turned out, since they have just a little more “atmosphere” than much of my previous work.  Something seemed different about this night at Studio b., perhaps the bad weather, it being the night of the terrible Tuscaloosa tornado.

At left I also am posting the drawing, now more developed, that I had started on the last day of the portrait workshop that I was taking from Charlotte Arnold last month.  When I last posted it, it was primarily a head study.  I used a photograph of that model and her pose,  for reference.

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot