Exercise for this week was to do an underpainting using burnt sienna, raw umber and titanium white.  So a warm, a cool and a cool white.  This mastercopy will be covered over with the Zorn palette next week, but I was amazed at the variety of color that I got out of such a simple palette; it could almost pass as a full figure painting.  The initial painting was done with burnt sienna and raw umber and no white.
  My friend asked me how we got the initial outline drawing.  I wanted to scale my figure up so I drew directly onto the canvas and then inked it with a thin sharpie, but we've also done direct transfers to get the outlines.  I've had trouble with transfers (not from a moral point of view) but because the proportions seem to be clunky and always a little off despite the fact that it's a direct transfer.
  Our teacher for these last two weeks is Mitchell Price who, like all the teachers, has been fantastic.  He's very intelligent, knows anatomy like the back of his hand and has a real gift for teaching the process in a manageable way.

   Two weeks left in the program for this summer.  These two weeks with Mario Robinson were great and I learned a ton.  We focused on figurative work and mastercopies.  I'm very proud of my Veláquez mastercopy (below).  I also started a Van Eyck mastercopy as well.  I'm looking forward to the next two weeks and seeing what the rest of the summer brings.

  This semester of grad school is going by very quickly and I'm really learning a ton of information. We're working with the live figure this year and doing some mastercopies as well.  Below is a gallery of a few of the drawings that I've been working on; the first two are life drawings and the next two images are of a Prud'hon mastercopy.  The mastercopy has been very challenging and is teaching me a lot.
  I'm very grateful that this MA in Studio Arts program exists because I'm learning techniques and skills that I've dreamed about for a very long time.  We're going back to the MET tomorrow and I'm excited to start painting in the next few weeks.