Stacy Weitz Minch

I didn't really feel like posting this one, but decided I would go ahead and throw it out there anyway because, well, I'm just like that--look at this hideous drawing, world! :P I was sort of exhausted yesterday and probably should have just gone home last night, but decided to stick around since I was there anyway, and I don't know what the sitter situation will be like the next few days. I guess I'm feeling a little pressed for time--I feel like maybe I'm arriving about 10 years late to this party (not exactly within the "fashionably" window), and it's a little depressing. I love devoting time to this, but it doesn't change the fact that the family still needs dinner and clean clothes and time with mom. Honestly, there's only so much of me to go around (and only so many spots next to me on the sofa... at least it's nice to know I'm wanted ;). It's getting harder to find babysitters, too, and goodness. I didn't think it wo

This is starting to feel pretty overworked to me. I was told to back up and make my shadow shapes more distinctly separate (and not grade them into the light), but now they're just feeling really harsh and loud to me. So I don't know. Feels like everything I do is a complete crap shoot lately. The good thing is I think I have gotten pretty close to her likeness after 9 hours. I've looked at this thing upside down and two kinds of backwards in the mirror and it doesn't offend me terribly from any angle--proportion wise, anyway. But learning to approach drawing another way feels a lot like being indoctrinated in a new religion. There is a very specific set of rules and philosophies to follow that are presented as ultimate truth. And I guess you just have to go with it and live it full force before you can decide what really makes sense to you. Right now I'm in obedience mode and that could last a while--it'll give me a solid base to start from anyway, w

This little two-hour figure felt like sweet freedom last night after laboring over that long pose for the 30th hour. Anyway, I know my line quality isn't great. But I'm getting a lot better about not needing to pull over a zillion measurements grid-style and be really meticulous about the whole sight-size thing... which I think means my natural eye for proportions is getting better. That's a good thing. And I spent longer than usual trying to hone in on that portrait, since it seems to be such a weak spot for me lately. Here's my long pose. The portrait is getting... closer. I think. At least the eye, cheekbone, and ear feel pretty good to me. The nose/mouth still need some work. And I'm trying to work on making my mass areas look flatter (which is sort of meticulous and involves a lot of light scraping across the paper to somewhat disguise the graininess of the paper + charcoal on top of it). This in an attempt to make way for more specific and subtle

8x8" It seemed like a good day for a carefree sketch of something. I haven't painted in a couple weeks, and maybe I'm missing it. Or maybe I'm just itching for a change from what I've been doing lately. This is me playing with paint and not thinking too hard--just letting the brush go.  I need that sometimes. These little studies may not be much, but I do think they are more helpful than I give them credit for. The mistakes made here are small, the pressure is low, and the lessons learned can be applied right away to the next little painting. So maybe I'll try to do it more. Or maybe I won't--just taking it day by day right now. I think this was 30-45 minutes or somewhere around there.

I knew this would start to get to me, and well, it's starting to get to me. And even though you know something is coming, you just can't be prepared for the onslaught of emotions. There's this part of me that knows I'm doing fine, I'm doing well. Really, I know that--I can't expect to do everything perfectly the first time (or ever). There's this other part of me that is screaming, "Run! Just get out now!!!!" The more you learn about something, the more you realize how much you are lacking. I have a sense for that. I can see how much I need to stretch to get better--it's daunting. Let's start with the long pose. I've been really struggling with the portrait on this one. I'm not sure why I'm having such a hard time seeing it, but I am. And I can see what I'm not seeing, which is really frustrating. Aside from the portrait, I'm confused about the way I'm supposed to set the values. I'm not supposed to put any

 My sister Jackie is in town, and she joined me for the evening figure session last night. Jackie has always been my best drawing buddy. My dad used to bring home the paper out of his recycling bin at work at the end of the day, and we would fill it all with our drawings. Mostly imagined things like mermaids and puppies and such. But I've always had an urge to just draw what I see as well. I have a drawing I did at age 6 of my mom's rocking chair. I think I drew it when she was gone for several hours one time and I was missing her. I remember crying by that rocking chair before I drew it. Let's see if I can find it... Haha, yep, here it is. I actually remember trying to draw those curved legs and being so confused. Looks like what I knew about them won out over how they actually looked in this case--funny how I'm still fighting the same battles today (my long pose figure is killing me ;)  Here's Jackie's figure, below--not too bad for her first ti

If anyone is consistently reading this blog, you will probably get pretty bored with these progress posts. I'm sorry. I really just like to document my thoughts and progress for my own personal reference. I've gotten to a point on this drawing where I'm a little confused about where to go next. There are a few drawing issues that were pointed out to me yesterday and still need to be fixed (I got a little zoned in on trying to capture that portrait, which still needs some tweaking, so didn't quite get to  them). But I'm just not sure how to approach doing the type of detail/finishing work I'm supposed to do here. Seems like the drawing has lost any fresh quality it once had and I don't know how to get that back, so my forward vision is sort of lacking. Honestly, right now I feel like I'm beating a dead horse... which I mentioned during the session yesterday and one of the students said, "Well, isn't that what drawing is?" Oh, I

This drawing is pretty personal. It's my older brother holding me when I was just days old, and he was five (also the first self portrait I've done in a while ;). This doesn't feel like the place to go into details, but this drawing is something I started in response to a difficult event in our family. I started it, left it alone for a few weeks, and decided to give it a little more time last night. Although the subject is personal, I'm always trying to improve my drawing skills. The reference was a photograph, of course. I always have a tough time working from photographs--just because they are so static, and there's so much information to sift through. I tried to simplify, and say a lot more with the quality of line than the gradation of value masses, which is something I'm trying to figure out with regard to my drawings from life as well. I kind of liked the feel of it at this point, so I decided to quit here (though I'll probably still touch it

Here's my long pose, 12 hours in. I think I've erased that face at the end of every session :P  Something about it is just off, and I think it is probably the shape or size of the head, because I'm basing the placement of the face off of where the head is. It's confusing me because I keep backing up to check my measurements for the head sight-size and they seem to add up. I may need to shave it down just a little bit. This woman does seem to have a proportionally larger head than some, but at this point, I think it's still too large. My teacher was thinking my hand was too short, so I lengthened that out a bit, but now it seems too long to me--the shape is better than it was previously, but it doesn't quite line up with the sight-size measurements I took, so I don't know... Anyway, the good news is I still have 36 hours to work these problems out (36 hours, what!?). This feels like a very long time to work on something, and I have no idea what I'm d

Start to a portrait of Nicole. Just trying to get everything placed in the right spot--seems like her left eye may be just a little too close to the nose. Maybe. I'll try to develop it a little further next week.

It seems to be about par for the course lately that I'm up in the middle of the night. There are a lot of thoughts swimming around in my head, so I thought I'd get at least some of them down (which might not be the best idea when it's 2AM, but oh well). Earlier this summer I won a scholarship for a month of full time study at a local atelier in the fall. I was pretty shocked that they selected me as the winner, since I really didn't feel like I had done much in the way of good work. But I was told that the decision was based largely on what they had seen of my dedication and stick-to-it-iveness (I had been coming around for evening drawing sessions for a while). I've been looking forward to this for months, and I started on Monday. Part of the day is spent working on a Bargue drawing copy (pictured above). The goal is to make an exact copy, virtually indistinguishable from the original (minus all the copier fuzz and all ;). I've worked on some co

5x7", water mixable oil on linen panel I haven't had much time to paint or draw lately. But these beautiful pieces of fruit just had to be painted. This was about an hour and a half study, I think. Someday, I'll be able to do them more justice, but believe me, they're better than they would have been a year or two ago (if you don't believe me, just click on the label for "pears" at the bottom of this post--it's a little scary ;). I think I'm painting a little too thin lately. My first experiences painting were with watercolor, and I still try to make use of that background as part of my value scheme (letting some of the white show through the paint on top). Oil doesn't work quite the same way, and I need to build up a little more paint. I think I'm slowly getting a little bit better at matching colors, though, and that's a good thing. Shadows are still a little confusing for me, especially the dark color right under the frui

I'm having a hard time having much to say about this stuff  this week, but here's another drawing. The head tended to twist quite a bit with each 20 minute session and I never really got it locked in. I'm trying to get the figure in a little quicker, so I can pay a lot more attention to the value gradation of the contour and shadow lines, to indicate form in a simple way.