I’m in NY, doing a figurative sculpture marathon with Bruce Gagnier at the NY Studio School. I’m three days into a two week intensive, and I’m loving it.
One of the topics my instructor presses is contrapposto. I learned about contrapposto at WWU, but I’m understanding the real value of it now. Bruce Gagnier showed me how exaggerating the tilt of the hips, and then exaggerating a responsive tilt to the rib cage (not the shoulders, as I had previously thought, but the imagined/invisible rib cage) and moving it to the side makes for a dynamic drawing or sculpture. He’s trying to get me to push my drawings more into motion. It’s good.
See how the sections are tilted, but also pulled side-to-side?
For another example, here’s my classmate’s figure drawing. She tilted the hips one way and tilted the ribs the other way, but she didn’t off-set the pieces to the right and left. Gagnier ripped the drawing into 3 pieces so we could move and tilt each section. What a difference the changes make! I’m adding contrapposto paper dolls to my class lessons!
Here is how the pieces can be used to shift the figure’s segments left and right.
Effing Argots
I was slow to catch on to this lesson. Too slow. Gagnier speaks the most stubbornly convoluted art speak I’ve ever heard. For the love of Pete, it took me two days to understand what it’ll take me two minutes to show my figure drawing class. An articulate vocabulary is expressive and delicious, but exclusionary argots have no place in our Seattle Artist League.
Here’s a wee snippitty boob flick from The Patriot TV sequential, to illustriate my tantamount anti-idolatryius, in excelsis deo. https://youtu.be/P5-9Rfrui9A?t=1
[image_with_animation image_url=”7871″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Claire Putney Draw/paint/collage/print/photograph what comes to your mind with the word “connectivity.” Share your sketches to this post on our Facebook page. (#salchallenge) The January Creative Challenge: 15 minutes, once a day, for 30 days.
My favorite painting to paint was Mud Festival Peonies. It’s large and bright, all happiness and play. This painting was a breakthrough into abstraction for me, something I’ve been wanting for a long time. It was also incredibly fun to paint! I stayed up a few nights to finish it, and I smiled all through …
In 1918, at the age of 28, Austrian artist Egon Schiele began painting a portrait of his new family. That autumn, Egon, his wife Edith, and their unborn baby died. They were among millions of people who succumbed to the Spanish flu that year. Before his death, Schiele mourned his mentor and friend, the artist …
After my post about Non-Toxic Oil Painting, I stopped by Artist & Craftsman to pick up a few new solvent free mediums. Of course there are far more oils and mediums on the shelf than I included here. Some mediums dry slower, some mediums are thicker, some mediums make unicorns appear. I didn’t get them …
The Dynamic Dance of Contrapposto
I’m in NY, doing a figurative sculpture marathon with Bruce Gagnier at the NY Studio School. I’m three days into a two week intensive, and I’m loving it.
One of the topics my instructor presses is contrapposto. I learned about contrapposto at WWU, but I’m understanding the real value of it now. Bruce Gagnier showed me how exaggerating the tilt of the hips, and then exaggerating a responsive tilt to the rib cage (not the shoulders, as I had previously thought, but the imagined/invisible rib cage) and moving it to the side makes for a dynamic drawing or sculpture. He’s trying to get me to push my drawings more into motion. It’s good.
See how the sections are tilted, but also pulled side-to-side?
For another example, here’s my classmate’s figure drawing. She tilted the hips one way and tilted the ribs the other way, but she didn’t off-set the pieces to the right and left. Gagnier ripped the drawing into 3 pieces so we could move and tilt each section. What a difference the changes make! I’m adding contrapposto paper dolls to my class lessons!
Here is how the pieces can be used to shift the figure’s segments left and right.
Effing Argots
I was slow to catch on to this lesson. Too slow. Gagnier speaks the most stubbornly convoluted art speak I’ve ever heard. For the love of Pete, it took me two days to understand what it’ll take me two minutes to show my figure drawing class. An articulate vocabulary is expressive and delicious, but exclusionary argots have no place in our Seattle Artist League.
Here’s a wee snippitty boob flick from The Patriot TV sequential, to illustriate my tantamount anti-idolatryius, in excelsis deo. https://youtu.be/P5-9Rfrui9A?t=1
Related Posts
SAL Challenge Day 27: Connectivity
[image_with_animation image_url=”7871″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Claire Putney Draw/paint/collage/print/photograph what comes to your mind with the word “connectivity.” Share your sketches to this post on our Facebook page. (#salchallenge) The January Creative Challenge: 15 minutes, once a day, for 30 days.
Some Pretty Paintings featured in the Cascadia Weekly
My favorite painting to paint was Mud Festival Peonies. It’s large and bright, all happiness and play. This painting was a breakthrough into abstraction for me, something I’ve been wanting for a long time. It was also incredibly fun to paint! I stayed up a few nights to finish it, and I smiled all through …
1918
In 1918, at the age of 28, Austrian artist Egon Schiele began painting a portrait of his new family. That autumn, Egon, his wife Edith, and their unborn baby died. They were among millions of people who succumbed to the Spanish flu that year. Before his death, Schiele mourned his mentor and friend, the artist …
A Sampling of Non-Toxic Oil Paint Mediums
After my post about Non-Toxic Oil Painting, I stopped by Artist & Craftsman to pick up a few new solvent free mediums. Of course there are far more oils and mediums on the shelf than I included here. Some mediums dry slower, some mediums are thicker, some mediums make unicorns appear. I didn’t get them …