Cast Drawing of Venus de Milo

Cast drawing is the term used at the Fine Arts League of Asheville (FALA) for a sight-sized drawing. This cast drawing was completed during the winter 2006 quarter. Students at FALA are expected to complete three cast drawings before progressing to the portrait class. This is my second cast drawing.

The process for doing a cast drawing requires that the student stand six feet from the cast, memorize what they see, then walk to the board and draw what they saw when they were six feet away -- not what the student sees standing next to the cast. It would be a completely different image.

One goal of this exercise is to teach the brain to truly see and to remember what it sees. Another goal is to learn about value.

The medium is charcoal.

This drawing consumed about 80 hours of my time and takes infinite patience by both the student and the teachers, Nathan Bartling and John Dempsey.

When she went home at the quarters end, she was perched on a chair in my living room. The next day some fellows came to pressure wash my deck and the water came through the crack around the door frame and put ugly black streaks across the drawing. It could not be corrected and I felt sick -- so much time!

What did I learn? In addition to learning about value and tone, how to see shapes, and the meaning of patience and persistence, she reinforced one of life's lessons: just like each of us, she was created as perfectly as her creator could make her, but life came along and gave her some flaws: ugly black things that could not be erased. So I shall accept what she is now and love her anyway. In fact, I may even frame her, just as a reminder...

Still Life of Apple and Red Bottle

This is my project for the still-life class taught by John Mac Kah during the 2006 winter quarter at the Fine Arts League of Asheville (FALA). This project consisted of five major steps and the main objective was to teach us about value.

The first assignment was to set up and quickly draw three different still lifes (20 minutes each). From those three, we selected one to do for the project.

The next step was to accurately render a charcoal drawing. Each item in the drawing had to be the same size and shape as the real item. The charcoal drawing can be seen in the photo taped to the wall underneath the still life.

At one point, as I was struggling with the contours of the bottle, I asked John why it had to be so exact. After all, who would ever know when it was hanging on someone's wall someday? His answer, "Because realism is about truth. You are drawing the truth of the object." This is a basic tenet of classical realism.

After doing the charcoal drawing, a tracing was made and the outline of the drawing was transferred to a gesso board prepared in the traditional way.

The next step was to paint a value study of the still life using only one oil paint: raw umber. This produced a sepia-like painting

When that dried, a grisaille was done over the raw umber. To do the grisaille, ten shades of gray were mixed using titanium white and raw umber. This produced a black and white painting similar to a black and white photograph of the still life.

The last step was to paint the still life using the colors of the actual still life over the grisaille. Unfortunately, the quarter ended before I painted the whole still life. You can still see the gray scale in the cloth and the shelf. Had there been more time, the painting would have been completely painted with color several times to get the color and value just right.

After the quarter was over I brought the painting back for John to look at. My hope was that he would tell me how to finish it. This is what he said: "This is a student work. Let is stand as a student work. It is not honest to go in and try to finish it after you have taken the model down." He said that I had achieved what he wanted me to and I felt good about what I had done. Even though it was not finished, it was completed.