Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Foreshortening as modelled by Stephen

Today's a bit of a higgledy-piggledy hodgepdge and a indeed, hotpot of a post.... some of my messy concept thumbnail type drawings and some kitty action. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Stephen was sleeping on my computer chair, so I picked him up (which is not easy) and plonked him on my lap. To my surprise, he stayed in exactly the position I left him in, flat on his back. He is so massive that I couldn't photograph all of him at the same time.






I have this photo of a graveyard in the village I used to live next to, and I really want to paint it. But I'm as yet unsure as to how I want the perspective to go, how cute I want to make the lines, and whether I'll put anything in it. Putting wrestlers in it feels a little contrived. And sort of vulgar. But how does a person judge these things? Painting pictures is a funny business.









Stephen has no suggestions.









Who's up for a fight? Bunnies and minotaurs?













It seems necessary to the congealing of my ideas to have these loose deranged pages in which elements can come together of their own accord.









One thing that's changed lately is that I'm trying to get a proper handle on perspective, because I was never taught it properly, yet I'm quite a fetishist for geometric tricks once I get into it. (See the new link on the right, to a very thorough page about perspective.) I used to try and convince myself that I was happy 'feeling things out' painting in quite a shallow, retarded pictorial space... but now I want to gain as much control as I can over these elements and not leave things to chance.

Here's an old painting with a nice feeling but no regard for perspectival depth at all:






But Stephen gives me lessons in dynamic perspective... in fact I've been studying kitty anatomy quite a lot. That's for a future blog.













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18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your only rival in the resplendent awesomeness stakes is Stephen The Fatabulous Cat.

Love the new banner.

Shawn Dickinson said...

The new banner makes Shawn cheerful!

Love the new art and photos, Chloe!

How about a painting of bunnies and minotaurs wrestling in a graveyard? It may be "contrived", but who cares? It might also be FUN! Let yourself go wild, baby! Haha!

...Of course, a "serious" painting of that graveyard would be very nice too. It's so beautiful. You and people who live in New England are lucky to live around them. We don't have randomly placed graveyards here in California like there are in the east. I find beauty in them.

Anonymous said...

Hey, you got pics of yourself! Nice!

Great sketches, it looks like am orgasm of creativity spilling out on the page at once, no restraints, no limitation! It's refreshing and original!

I give the edge to minotaurs. Everyone knows bunnies don't exist.

I hate cats!

Marc Deckter said...

Nice new banner!

I'm happy to see a return of the bunnies into your studies...

Chloe Cumming said...

Hi Marc... well these are really kind of leftover bunnies from the last time... I don't know, time confuses me and congeals into a big sugary morass. What's a morass?

Chloe Cumming said...

Jorge... I think Kali was right about you.

But orgasms of creativity are nice on my paper.

Shawn... contrivance... sometimes it seems like a problem and sometimes it don't. There kind of have to be a series of moments where it seems like the right thing to do...

Thanks for liking the banner. I hope it's not too brazen.

Anonymous said...

>Jorge... I think Kali was right about you.

Hey, I was found innocent by a jury of my peers. I wasn't even on that yacht!

Uh, I've said too much.

Anonymous said...

I'm just as interesting as Stephen, just because I dont sit on computer chairs, no one asks my opinion. I think wrestlers have no place in graveyards ( except the Undertaker of course) but bunnies and minotaurs would be alright in moderation

Anonymous said...

hal, What about Grave Digger? What, that's a monster truck.

Chloe Cumming said...

Hello Hal... fancy meeting you here. Funny, you normally accept Stephen's attention seeking with good grace and meekness. Then you lick his head.

william wray said...

I'd do a little painting of the grave yard all by itself to warm up. Then do a second one adding one element, then a third adding everything. By that time you will have it all figured out. Perspective is just practice, get Andrew Loomis book and do a bunch of copying, it won't take that long.

Anonymous said...

Well you see, I know that Stephen is really your favourite, and I don't mind that at all, we can't all be huge and charismatic, but I do have my own owl-bear opinions and I thought the world of internetationality might appreciate my owl-bearishness photogenicity and of course my wondrous feline-nightfowl-ursine vocabularity

Chloe Cumming said...

Hi William,

Thanks a lot for the tip about the Loomis book, I've been looking around for useful instruction about perspective. I think a lot of the reason I never learnt it 'properly' was bad books that weren't logical enough or thorough enough. I always understood the most basic basics, but they didn't seem enough.

My plan was to do a painting of the graveyard by itself and then see what seemed to be for the best... mostly just now I'm oil painting some boobies.

Chloe Cumming said...

After looking Andrew Loomis books, I was elevated to discover that at least four of his books seem to be online in their entirety, due to their being out of print and stuff. So I've put the link my links because what I've read so far I've found helpful already.

Chloe Cumming said...

Hey Hal what's with the 'tude? You know you're my secret favourite and we have a special bond.

Then again, I'm no expert but I think I read somewhere that cats can't type. So perhaps we are dealing with an imposter.

Chloe Cumming said...

That should have been 'looking up' not just 'looking'... gosh I've really bumped up my comment count this sesh

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