Stacy Weitz Minch

Beginnings. This is after the first couple of hours. I have a long way to go with this one...

10x10", charcoal, pastel, and graphite on Arches MBM Ingres paper I finished up my first cast drawing on Saturday! I'm excited to get started on the next one (see below). I'm not locked in on this setup yet, just fiddling around and trying to figure out what the best arrangement will be.

Horrible photo quality here, but this is my current cast project in progress. It feels like I'm getting close to the finish, but I need to address the entire drawing, paying special attention to turning the form and giving it a "sculptural" quality. So more specific information as to how the forms turn away/toward the light. The shapes/impression are there. I've heard some people say that they love finishing--it's the funnest part for them. For me, it's the most grueling. I think I see more impressionistically, so finishing is just really difficult and tedious. Starting's the fun part for me.

I spent a few hours working on this cast this afternoon. It was a stormy day and the light was changing a lot. I mostly worked on the upper brow area. It's hard to see how all those forms come together under the brow, especially when I back up--as you can see in the photo the darker values all blur into a big blobby mass from farther back. And then when I'm up close, the angle I view the cast from doesn't match the drawing. So I can get closer to the cast and line the plumb up in the right spot and try to memorize where things should overlap/meet, but I have to commit it to memory and then head back over to my drawing and quickly try to get it down. I guess what I'm saying is I can't stand at my drawing and look at the reference. It's all a memory game, which is a little bit difficult. But I'm trying. The eye needs some work. First it was too small, and now I think I may have overcorrected and made it too big. I probably need to pull in some of the cont...

  Yesterday was the last day of this long pose. When all is said and done, I only got about 20 hours of drawing in on it--could have spent a lot more. But since I knew I was short on time, I gave each of those hours my full sprint, and worked through a good portion of the model breaks, so no regrets here. But I have quite a few things I'm going to try to better next month.

Ha, in the first two weeks of this pose I've spent a total of 2.5 hours on this poor drawing! I'm going to have to play some serious catch-up in the next two weeks.

Oh happy day! I finished this beast of a Bargue plate this week. And just look at all those crisp, beautiful shapes ;) This is some tedious stuff, but I really do think it's improving my ability to see and correct shape, value, and edge--well worth the misery and frustration. Next will be a charcoal, which I'm sure that will bring its own set of frustrations.

I started bringing some of the values down this week so I could get a more solid handle on the shapes (it's kind of hard to see if they're correct when they're light in value). It's always a little scary, because once you start adding more pigment to the paper, it's harder to lift. So I'm trying to be pretty careful about where I darken things so I won't regret it later. It's also a point where it starts to feel like it'll get worse before it gets better--just because it starts to feel somewhat disjointed. I can only go so fast, so it's not all going to be united in value for a bit, and I really have to trust myself moving forward. I started at the top of the head because that was one place I felt pretty confident in my shapes (and because I figured it would make sense logistically to move from top to bottom, just for the practicality of smudging things on the way down). But my instructor felt like procedurally, it would make more sense ...

Okay, this is after day 7? of working on this guy. It just gets more and more fun, ha. Hoping I've made a little progress in the past few days ;) Out of curiosity, I was searching google for the statue this may have been drawn from. This was the closest one I could find. Super interesting. Although maybe it was a reproduction of the one here that Bargue used. I don't know. There are some notable differences.

I sat around doodling on this portrait for a little while this afternoon, trying to remember enough about the form to give it a little more finish. It would have been a lot easier with the model in front of me. Pretty sure I lost some of the likeness along the way and overdid it with that white. It is what it is.  Before/after I'm almost in the mood to quit this stuff altogether today. It's stupid. I know it and I won't do it. But some days it's easier to quiet that urge than others. Often the foremost though running through my head while working on this stuff is " Why am I doing this?!". It's a good question, ha. Just one of those days, I guess. Day three (or four? I think four) of this cheery old Bargue face. I wish there was a way to expedite this, but there really isn't :P No way out but through.  And please excuse my moodiness. I guess I should have worked in a run this morning.

This is the start of my new Bargue--Homer, I hear. I spent about the first 1.5 hours+ drawing the guidelines, then an hour and a half or so blocking in. And this was a couple hours into the next day. So a few hours in. It's just starting to set in how miserable this could end up being, ha :P  My drawing was feeling pretty stale last night. I didn't get a lot of sleep the night before, which I find can make a huge difference for me. I'm sad I got the stomach flu on the day I could have finished this one up. I kind of liked how it started. Sorry for the boring blog posts lately. Time is short these days. I could blame it on the holidays, but mostly it's just trying to divide my time between the important things and people in my life.

I guess I've posted progress shots of this pretty recently, and once you get this far changes are kind of slight, so this may not be too interesting. But here's the conclusion of my extended figure drawing from last month (sorry for the poor photo quality--maybe I'll try to take a photo with my real camera after I bring this home). I had a total of about 36 hours on this drawing, and I probably could have kept going for a while. I guess the good thing about being limited on the amount of time I have to spend at the studio is that I'm really focused while I'm there. Don't want to waste a minute. I started a new Bargue drawing yesterday, and I'll try to remember to take progress shots of that, too. At least in the early stages when the changes are noticeable.

I don't know what to say about this... except that it's done! And a new one's up on the board. And I left this one sitting precariously on a chair in the studio (oops ;).

Sorry to bore you with progress shots. I know very well that the changes at this point are not very exciting. Working on this Bargue has been rather trying on my patience, and there's this part of me that feels like I will never ever finish it. I'm sure it's not true, but that's how it feels. I feel like I could continue making small adjustments on this thing forever and never get there. It's never going to be exactly alike. At what point to you say, "Good enough?" I know the point of call is much later than what I traditionally have done--just not sure where or how far away that is :P And here's my long figure pose. I might get one more day on this next week if I'm lucky (things are a little crazy next week). I've worked on this one for 30 hours so far. This extended drawing is a test of patience as well, and I'm trying so, so hard. That's all I can do, I guess. At any rate, I guess it's good that the weekend has come arou...

These are low-light studio shots, but a lot of my creative time has been spent here lately. I have a few things going right now--a portrait, an extended figure pose, and my Bargue drawing (which I forgot to take a picture of). I actually think I'm getting pretty close to finishing that Bargue (knock on wood). On the first night of this portrait (right), the head got tilted after I blocked it in, so I started over the next time the model came in. I decided to switch over to pencil after the first attempt, since it's just more familiar and I knew I would only have two sessions on it. This is my current extended figure drawing (along with some GCA inspiration on the right of my board--Colleen Barry drawing up top, and Kevin Muller Cisneros on the bottom, and some drawing guidelines from Colleen in the middle there :). This is extended figure #2 for me, and there is so much yet to learn, yikes. I've had a bout 27 hours on this one so far. I mostly worked the he...

Last night we did our annual viewing of the movie Casper , and all that talk about "unfinished business" just kept reminding me of what this poor drawing is bound to become (and where my current Bargue copy still lies!) :/ Oy. I'm attending this class part-time, which means I have half the time everyone else does, and this is the last week. I've totally destroyed that hand. I don't even know what to do about it except start over and get rid of the sausage-link effect, but I just don't have the time. I feel like there's some foundationally weird something going on with the legs/feet (not that you can really see it here). And overall, the whole drawing just feels  disjointed. Which might be okay if I had two more weeks of work. But since I have a mere 3 hours left, I don't know. I guess I'll just do what I can. And maybe get that portrait a little closer to reality (which is much nicer than what I have here, though I think I'm getting a litt...

It seems like the camera upped the contrast on this photo, so... sorry about that. This was a 48-hour labor of love and hate and everything in-between. The first 46 hours were spent on the figure and the last two on the background and drapery, ha! In the end, I do feel a pretty significant sense of accomplishment--I've never pushed a drawing to this this level, and I learned a lot about value, subtlety, transitions, line, etc (oh, and also using charcoal :P). But there is still so much to learn and enormous room for improvement. That's an exciting and terrifying place to be. Yesterday was the last day of my scholarship at the atelier, and ohh I want to keep studying so bad. Sometimes I just feel like kicking myself for not starting this kind of thing when I was 18 or something. But hindsight's 20/20, and when I think about it, 1) I had little awareness that something like this existed or was within my reach.  And 2) I don't think I was ready for it anyway. I th...

Still just trudging along with this little Bargue here. Once I have the carved hair down pretty solid, I think I'll feel a bit better about it. It's getting closer, but the progress is oh-so-slow. Especially because it's been hard to get the time in on this thing this week. Babysitters are getting harder to come by, and I have a hard time working on this for more than 2-3 hours at a time. I did put some time in on it this morning, which was nice. I always like driving around on a Saturday or Sunday morning--it's so quiet, and the roads are so empty it almost feels like home ;) Here's the progress on my long pose portrait. I was feeling sort of paralyzed on this thing for quite a bit of the week. But yesterday I finally just shut my brain up and drew for a bit. I want to do things correctly and do them in the right order, but I'm going to have to find a way to strike a balance between following my intuition and following correct principles. If I get thin...

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 ...