Stacy Weitz Minch

I've been working on this cast drawing about 5 hours now, and managed to snag a quick critique this afternoon with my main instructor here between trips (busy guy!). I'm in the process of tweaking the size/shape of the eye and fine tuning the outer contour, so it's not looking quite right. But it will... eventually ;)

10x8", oil on board I think I'm ready to call it quits with this painting. Working from photos--I probably just shouldn't do it. One of my professors told me that a long long time ago, and he was probably more than right, but for some reason I keep coming back to it. And why? Convenience. It's so much easier to be able to hang around in the corner painting after the kids are in bed than arranging for some way for them to be occupied or cared for while I paint outside on location :P And sometimes I get tired of painting still life (which usually ends up being piece of fruit I have around the kitchen). But painting from life leads to much better decision making, and it's worth avoiding the frustration of trying to translate a photo into paint. Anyway, I think the color is alright (though it does seem a little hyper saturated in this photo). What really gets lost, I think, is the freshness of approach. For some reason, the immediacy of having the thing in fro...

I guess I haven't gotten around to posting my iPhone photos from the San Diego Museum of Art in March. I had hoped to get to the Getty and maybe the Lipking show while in CA, but unfortunately the traffic getting to LA was terrible (and even worse once we got there) and the kids couldn't take another 90 miles through LA traffic. But I did get to the Timken and SDMA, so that was nice :) Joaquin Sorolla. I've read he painted furiously, and that people would cry when they saw him painting in person. The whites on that dress are so beautiful. Also, he painted on HUGE canvases on location. Bouguereau - I came back to it a few times to look at the masterful handling of that paint. The pictures don't do it justice at all. Sometimes I think I should put earplugs in when I'm in a museum, because once in a while I get a little perturbed when people walk up to a painting like this and say things like, "Huh, I guess he technically did a good job, I mean, if tha...

3-hour drawing from structure class. I sat on a drawing horse last night because I thought the angle was really nice from there, but not being able to back up made it harder to see the proportions correctly. I think I may finally be starting to capture the gesture here (3 hours feels like a long time to get the gesture down, but approaching it comparatively/structurally on a larger scale still takes me a little longer). Those curly designs on the right are indicating the design of a Raphael painting, illustrating how he uses the human body as an ornamental element of design (and there is potentially a similar movement in this pose).  I've also been encouraged to start doing some master copies from artists who appeared to just have fun with mark making. It seems I am moving forward somewhat mechanically and not allowing myself the freedom to have fun with it (which I would agree with). Marching vs. strutting. Maintaining the accuracy (which is an important element of drawin...

This is 12 hours into this portrait, and I think we will have one more session with this model. Sometimes I feel like the longer I work on something, the less fond of it I become. And I don't know if that's because I get tired of looking at it, or if my preference isn't for images with a higher level of "finish", or if maybe my "finish" isn't quite as intelligent as I would like it to be. I'm not sure. Overall I've been pretty happy with the progression of his portrait, so I'm not trying to degrade it or anything. Just wondering why mentally, I get less  and less enthused as time goes on, because it does seem like I've made progress on it each week.  I guess maybe it could be that I just don't want it to look like I've labored over the thing (and this one might be starting to show the hours). Not that it's a bad thing to work for a good long time on something. It's just that I want the strokes I make to reall...

I kind of hate this drawing right now. I didn't feel like doing the same thing I always do, so I attempted to shake it up a bit, and I suppose I did that. But I don't feel like the decisions I made here work very well. For one thing, I think there's a little too much spotty-ness in the values. And there's too much diagonal motion in one direction. But I want to start thinking about the design and aesthetic of my entire drawing, even in these short sketches. This was some kind of attempt at that--and if I flop, well... I'm going to flop.  I flipped this one around with a photo editor, and it looks so weird to me going the other direction. I don't know if that's just me (or why I didn't notice it in my mirror). It could be that when the eye is forced to lead in from the right it feels off to us westerners. One of my college professors told me that it's better in our culture to have your composition lead in from the left since we read from le...

These are some quick little sketches of the skull after some Colleen Barry studies I found online. Hers are really nice, of course. Looking at her drawings, you can tell that she has such a solid understanding of what she's looking at as she draws. It's more than just copying. Goals...

(sorry for the glare) Every year for the past few years I've tried to paint some lilacs when spring comes around. They're my favorite flower, and I just don't think anything smells better. But I'm biased. Growing up in Montana, the entire perimeter of my yard was made up of lilac bushes, and those blooming lilacs... heavenly! The painting is sketchy and could probably be considered unfinished, but I feel like I've said what I wanted to say, so I'm just letting it rest here. Better quit while I'm ahead (or while the rendering still feels genuinely like me--sometimes if I keep going I start thinking too much and it gets overworked in a not-good way). Maybe I'll try to do some purple ones this week too if I get the chance :)

Very rough block-in of this cast (maybe almost an hour?). This is my first cast drawing, and I was having some trouble setting it up. I have a feeling that I started it all wrong... I'm half expecting to be told to start over, and if so, it's fine. I started out straight sight-size, but the drawing was going to be so small it seemed like rendering all the little shapes in charcoal would be a major pain. So I just drew the top/bottom lines in at life size. I can back up quite a ways and get it to fit sight size, so it might work alright. I don't know. It's kind of weird because the cast is in the back of the shadow box, and if I push my easel up closer, the easel will be in shadow, but if the easel is pulled forward into the light the cast becomes that much smaller in my field of vision... I'm thinking I'll have to do more comparative measuring with this one because even if you do get it into sight size, the measurements will be so small from that far ba...

I kept wondering why I was feeling so far behind on this drawing. Then yesterday after the pose ended I started counting up all the hours I was actually present for the pose, and realized it was less than half, 23 of the 48 hours. It's hard not to compare my work to the students who have been there for most of those 48 hours, but it's really not a fair comparison (and I've realized I'm not much of a fan of comparisons during critiques either--case in point, the portrait below that I hastily wiped out following one such critique. Not saying I mind someone pointing out good points in others' drawings, just the direct comparison can be a little painful). The portrait I wiped out was probably a little better imho (which makes sense, since I spent a LOT longer on it--even though I attempted to make suggested corrections in my second attempt, mostly lifting the eyes a bit), but that's a moot point now. What I like about this drawing is that it feels like a so...

4 week (12 hour) drawing from structure class.  It seems like I was able to get a little bit farther this time than I have in the past so maybe I'm getting more familiar with the approach.  I don't mind this drawing too much, and I think what I like about it is that even though it doesn't look just like the model, the gesture feels like it works together and has a nice rhythm. It would have been nice to have another session or two with this pose so I could refine things more, but I may still fiddle with it some at home. I was trying to add the value in broad planes and then pick the highlights out, which was actually a lot easier to get the feel for with the col-erase than it seems to be with charcoal--just easier to control what goes onto the page in the first place. The face on my drawing got smudged on the way home, and I attempted a quick fix but it's not looking great. The portrait doesn't look much like the model either--with only 12 hours you have to pic...

  This is my completed Bargue copy of the Belvedere torso. It feels like it took forever to finish, but for the most part I was only able to work on it one day a week, so I guess it didn't take as long as it seems (though I did start it in January!). At any rate, I'm glad to be done with it and move on to something new.

Quick figure from the other night. I don't have much to say about it except I didn't get it to fit on the page exactly the way I was intending. Reclining poses are always a little tricky for setting widths.

  I made it in for about an hour and a half of this session yesterday. Still working on trying to get this thing to look a little less messy, and to get the rounding of the forms in place. Also spent 20 minutes or so trying to lay the portrait in again. At least she has a face now. At this point, I don't really care all that much about getting the likeness. I'm going to try to attack the finishing aspects of the figure as the first priority in the little time I have left.

I've been doing a little painting on this 8x10" landscape I started from a photograph several months ago. Painting from photos is tough and painting over old sketches... I dunno :/