beside the easel

Study for Transfiguration, 2011 Last year I decided to do a study of Raphael's St. Andrew from the Transfiguration using coloured pencil for the first time. It's a highly underrated medium for drawing. Rich colours can be built up in layers yet with a softness of tone that doesn't smear like pastel, yet from a distance has the same qualities as a painting. I think if the Old Masters had coloured pencil in their day, they would have made use of it in their own studies. They made extensive use of red and black chalk...this would have given them full-colour without wasting a single drop of paint. In this study I was less patient than typical color pencil artists. Normally, lights are built up slowly and then darks, but I decided to work from dark to light then erase my highlights to create them. Hey, it works. I used Prismacolor in this study but I found Faber-Castel's Polychromos set to be even more rich with pigment and better selection of colours. I buy my colours...

Last summer I did something quite ambitious, challenging...something I wasn't sure I could do...something that only after being in Italy for a month in the previous September would rouse my brain to attempt: I decided I needed to do an Old Master study. Up until this point I had done numerous sketches like most artists, but the extent of my practice was mostly visual. I went museum crazy all over Rome in 2010 and in the process I felt like I learned enough to move up to the next level. Somehow, the pastel work I had done made me want to give it a shot. I had found this image online from my usual research of Old Master Baroque paintings: Vision of St. Jerome, c 1627 Johann Liss was a German Baroque painter of the seicento, or 17th century, who lived in Venice for most of his career. Having been inspired by Caravaggio and the deep colors of Titian and Tintoretto he blended those styles into his own craft of drama, solid figures and intense color. St. Jerome has been a subject ...