Sunday, March 4, 2012

In the Flesh

4 hours of an 8 hour pose

8 hour pose

4 hours

12 hours.
I've never spent this long on a single image for my personal work that I can recall. What interests me is that one can keep finding something to paint....or repaint, correct, restate, etc. while trying to keep it fresh. Still after all these hours of labor, I can glance at it as a thumbnail on my desktop and ask myself questions like, why are her arms seemingly so long, her hand so large, what's that rash on her upper chest, why is her right breast lacking form, is her head way too small? Then again, does it matter? This kind of 'work' is more beguiling than I ever imagined. The body is a landscape full of beautiful color shifts, receding planes, valleys, translucency, reflective color in shadow, edges... the list goes on. It is a great, immersive workout. I just dive in and start painting, then repairing, then wandering through different regions conducting experiments on form description and edges... then the pose is over. Time flies by. I don't quite know how to wrap them up yet, or what to leave out. That'll take awhile. Go check out what Terry Miura is doing with the figure if you want to see how strong a reductive approach can be.



Sierra workshop full, Colorado workshop cancelled
For scheduling reasons, I've had to cancel my Colorado workshop. Unfortunately, I could not find an alternative date that worked for this year. My apologies to those that were interested in taking it. Hopefully I can do one another year. My workshop in the Sierra Buttes is full up, with a waiting list.

2 comments:

Mary Aslin said...

Great figures, Bill! Where do you paint them?

Bill Cone said...

Thanks Mary. There is an art room available at my job, where classes are available in a variety of media. I attend a self-directed figure class there one evening a week, then on Saturdays, a small group of us meet up for more of the same.