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.

  Had a trip to the MET today and saw the Winslow Homer exhibit.  The exhibit is quite large and contains many iconic Homer works.  Some of the works I've seen before in Philadelphia's museums when I was a student.  I'm not a huge Homer fan, but I'm fond of his watercolors, which are very vivid and nice to see in person.  I didn't bother to take photos of his oils because the photos don't do justice and looked like garbage.  The other image below is a Frits Thaulow that I was also admiring.  
  Prior to seeing these works, our Florence Academy group got up close with some master drawings in the MET's drawing and prints department library, which you can access by appointment only.  We saw works by Rubens, Goya, Lagros, Allan Ramsay, Ribera, among others.  We got to sketch from these drawings without any glass between us and the drawings.  It was a cool experience.

  Had another great day today at Van Vleck in Montclair.  Thanks again to Karen Meneghin from Zane Grey Plein Air for organizing this.

Here are some photos of the irises and some other beautiful flowers