Progression of a Portrait

Below is the progression of a recent portrait I did of my friend Jeff Muniz (not to be confused with my instructor, Jeff Hein). 

I'm currently available for portrait commissions. 

If you or someone you know is interested in a charcoal portrait drawing, please contact me at courtneyvv@gmail.com. I prefer to work from life (you would come to my studio and sit still while I draw you). The standard amount of time for such a portrait is about nine hours (three 3 hour sessions). It's pretty interesting seeing your face come to life on a piece of paper.

Pictures from our Art Show

Here are some pictures from The Hein Academy art show last month (November 15).

Jeff Hein beginning a three hour painting demonstration

Jeff's final painting. Beautiful!

Academy students! Emily, me, Lis and John

Emily, Jenna, me and Emily 2!

We were honored to enjoy music from Beaux's band, St. Boheme. Love them!

Art Show this Friday!

Come see what the Hein Academy of Art is all about...here's the official invite:

Jeff Hein and the Hein Academy of Art are pleased to announce our fall art event. This is no ordinary art show. It will begin at 3pm, Friday the 15th of November with a free painting demonstration by Jeff Hein (in the East Building). This will run until 6pm, at which time the art show will begin. Student work will be shown in both the east building and west building until 9pm. In the west Building Jeff's private studio will be open where a series of plein air paintings will be for sale as well as a few portraits and other works. Also Jeff will be there to explain his unique process with the works in progress around the studio. Light refreshments will be served. We hope to see you all there!

List of Exhibitors
Jeff Hein

Students
Rob Adamson
Lis Andersen
Jenna Carrington
Heidi Darley
John Darley
Skip Douglas
Tony Dupree
Sarah Hessinger
Bob Pack
Heather Rison
Courtney Vander Veur
Emily Wetterauer

Alumni
Joann Musser
Barbara Pence

Hein Academy of Art
East building, 11e 700s
West Building, 16w 700s
Salt Lake City, Utah 84101

www.heinacademyofart.com

Huzzah!

This is the first portrait I've been able to finish in one session (4 hours), which I'm pretty excited about. I could definitely take it further, but I'm fairly satisfied with it right now and it looks like Kadee. Done and done.

Mannequin Skin

Here are some progress shots of last month's figure painting. Our model had an accident a couple years ago...she was run over by a train and lost both her legs. She's only 19 but has a great attitude and now competes as a skiier in the Paralympics.

I began the painting below at the beginning of September and I feel like I've learned so much about flesh tones since then! As you can see, I was using a lot of orange but Jeff showed me that there was a lot more color in her skin than I realized. He painted a small figure on my canvas to the left of mine and made her back much cooler by adding yellow and green...what? I did not see that.  I felt a little discouraged as Jeff was pointing out some crazy colors but in the last month, with Jeff's help,  I've started to recognize the color that I didn't see before. Hooray!

(by the way, I know these paintings are really ugly and I kind of hate looking at them, but I'm posting them to show what I've learned)

Jeff encouraged me to be more bold with color and to exaggerate a bit at first because I can always tone the colors down when needed. To help me practice being bold I decided to do some small studies. The paintings below are about 5x7" while the one above was closer to 16x20."

Notice how the orange figures don't look as real. They seem like mannequins. When you add more color they start to come to life.

I did the figure on the left, from the same view as above, and made the back really green.  Then I tried another view from the front.

This is the same front view as above, but more finished. The chest was much cooler than the rest of the body. I exaggerated that a bit and made it quite blue. Jeff said it was too cool and didn't feel cohesive with the rest of the figure, but he liked the sliver of green on the back and the yellow on the abs. He told me to leave it as is and try again.

This is attempt 2. Jeff said the chest was more successful, but some of the first painting was better than this version.

This is the same painting as above to compare with the edits Jeff made on the painting below.

 Jeff added some yellow to the shadows on the torso to warm them up a little.  He taught me that often when there's a figure whose flesh feels pasty it's because the shadows are too cool.

In the open air

Yesterday a few of us from the Hein Academy decided to take advantage of the beautiful fall weather and go plein air painting up Little Cottonwood Canyon! I have never really done plein air painting so it was a lot of fun just to have the experience. We were hoping to get some fall colors but we missed it by about a week. We were surprised to see snow and it was neat to paint a winter scene without freezing. It was a bit nippy because of a cold breeze, but the sun was shining and it was glorious!

I did the painting on the right first (see below), but it was not going well so I started over with a different view (on the left). It felt really different from the portraits and still lifes that I'm used to. It was a bit liberating because you don't have to be precise and it still works. It was fun!

While we were painting some photographers from Florida came over and asked to take our picture. They might email us some of the pics they took, which I'm sure are much better than mine. If so I'll be sure to post them.

(sorry for the glare)

 

plein air painting with the crew up Little Cottonwood Canyon

Mountain Man

Thanks to Jeremy for sitting for me.

Struggles with Stripes

If you look carefully you may notice that the apple in front has a slightly warmer tint than the apples behind it. They get progressively cooler. That's the newest painting trick I've been practicing with this assignment. When an object is warmer than those around it, it seems to be closer.

It didn't take me long to paint these apples, but Jeff did a demonstration on one of them to encourage me to use more paint and give more form to the apple (see pics below). I adjusted his brush strokes a bit later on to make his apple more cohesive with the rest of my painting.

The bricks had to be corrected a few times to get the proper temperature and to make sure they look straight and like they're moving towards the same vanishing point.

The stripes were the biggest challenge to this piece and they took me a long time since I had to paint them three or four times before I got them right (see images and captions below). The cloth in the shadow was too cool on my first attempt and it took me a couple more tries before I got the values and temperature correct on each stripe. But it was worth it. I learned A LOT and I'm happy with the final product.

final painting

my apple before Jeff's demo

the same apple after Jeff repainted it

Jeff's apple in better light

I took this pic before I adjusted the temperature of
of the fabric. It's too cool, which is noticeable in
top left corner of the cloth. Also, the stripes weren't
dark enough as they recede into the shadows.
Especially notice the yellow, which was
incorrectly lighter than the white fabric next to it.
And the blue stripes in the darkest fold (in front
of the apples) are too bright.

This is the same painting as above, shown again
to compare with the previous version. The yellow
stripes were tricky because I had to mix an
orange-brown color to make them look dark enough
at the back of the fabric.

Charcoal Portrait

Here's a charcoal portrait from last week. He sat for us for six hours (in two sessions).

Memory Lane

I ran across this photo of a model painting I did several months ago. Maybe a year ago? I kinda like it.

blue goblet, green book, yellow string

Does anyone use the word goblet anymore? This blue goblet is one of a set used by my family for Sunday dinners as I was growing up. I saved it from a trip to the D.I. a few weeks ago and decided to memorialize it in paint, along with my mom's french dictionary and a bright red book.


From this assignment I learned that more saturated colors (brighter, less gray) make the object come forward and duller/gray colors recede. The reflected light from the books onto the sheet (above the green book and to the left of the red/green stack) was originally more saturated, but those folds were competing with the books, appearing closer to the viewer. Jeff pointed this out to me and I dimmed the colors down a bit. The light shining through the goblet has more color than I originally noticed too.

After taking a pic of it on my easel, I moved the painting under a skylight in Jeff's studio and am impressed with how much better the colors look in natural light! My camera phone isn't very high resolution either but more light helped the definition. 

finished painting photographed on my phone under a skylight

finished painting photographed on my phone in the darker, artificially lit studio

When I first painted the bricks in the background of the painting, Jeff thought they looked a little off. He suggested that set a string at eye level where the bricks' vanishing point would be, and use the string as a guide to see if I drew the angles of the bricks correctly. It sounded like a difficult task at first, but Jeff showed me where he thought the vanishing point would be and I set up the string...

I was surprised and impressed to discover that Jeff's vanishing point was spot on, and that my angles were basically correct! I just used a ruler to make the lines straighter, which helped the bricks feel more solid.

Great lesson in perspective! Way to go, Jeff!

Hey there, Roman guy.

Here's the final picture of my first color painting at the Hein Academy, which I finished about a month ago. It's not perfect but Jeff mercifully allowed me to move on to the next assignment. One thing I could have done better is creating more defined planes of color in areas, such as the beard, to give it more form.

3 year anniversary!

This month marks my three year anniversary of studying at the Hein Academy of Art! I dug up an old self-portrait from college and it's kind of amazing for me to see how much I've improved. My progress has been so gradual that I didn't realize how much I've learned until I see the difference side by side. 

AFTER

BEFORE

Below is a progression of  self-portraits I've drawn or painted, starting with my most recent, and working back 18 years! All of these were done from life, looking in a mirror.

January 2013 (after 2.5 years at the Hein Academy)

April 2012 (after 2 years at the Hein Academy)

2004 (during college)

1998 (senior in high school)

1996 (sophomore in high school)