Marie, alla prima... mostly

Rob Sullivan · 05-05-2005, 10:45 AM

Seems as if my art has been constrained to teaching demos these days. Well, the semester ended last week, so I'm hunkering down for a month of serious painting... whatever "serious" means.

Marie is 16" x 12", oil on (yuck!) canvas paper. Yes, I know - why canvas paper?!?! Well, like I said, it was a demo. Why waste a good panel? Anyway, I challenged my portrait students to move away from the anchor of the underpainting and launch into an alla prima. I showed them the approach, which is very Sanden-like; big doses of chroma initially, then wet-into wet building light and knocking it back to specific flesh tones.

I wanted to challenge myself, too, as I'm not a big practicioner of direct painting - and I stepped up the challenge further by moving off to one side for a flatly-lit profile. Fortunately, Marie has some wonderful Roman features and Mediterranean skin tones to work with. I requested the peach sweater and she brought a similarly- colored silk scarf to match. It compressed the palette, which was a further challenge. I think my students wanted my head for that choice. They did all right, though.

This was about three hours, all told, with some minor tinkering at home to shift the hues more subtly and consolidate the background tone.

Maria Nemchuk · 05-05-2005, 11:34 AM

Rob,

That a wonderful portrait! I love how you handled the light on her face (I'm a big fan of alla prima you know

)

Where do you teach?

Maria

David Draime · 05-05-2005, 12:15 PM

Beautiful! Such a lovely warmth to her. And yes, where do you teach...full-time?

Rob Sullivan · 05-05-2005, 12:32 PM

Thank you both so much! It's nice to hear, since, like I'd said, I'm technically a beginner at the alla prima thing.

I teach at the New Hampshire Institute of Art (site) in both BFA and Lifelong Learning (fancy talk for continuing ed) programs. I log as many hours, if not more than, full time teachers, but they will never confer that title upon me (nor allow me to teach more than 2 BFA classes), since I do not have an MFA. So, I remain an adjunct faculty member.

I also teach at Sanctuary Arts here in Maine (site), which is a privately-owned art school. All this teaching takes up a lot of my time, and I wish I could paint more of my own work - especially now that I'm getting a few sales - but it could be worse.

There's a step by step demo of a portrait in the demo section of this site (link), done at NHIA. Not alla prima, but pretty loose, for me.

Maria Nemchuk · 05-06-2005, 11:03 AM

Rob,

Looks like you are teaching a lot.
Romantic Figures In The Garden sounds very intriguing! Can you tell more about this class?

Maria

Linda Brandon · 05-07-2005, 09:47 AM

Hi Rob,

Congratulations on the lovely interplay of cools and warms in the fleshtones. I love your life paintings and drawings and this one is no exception.

Rob Sullivan · 05-11-2005, 09:40 AM

You bet your kolinskys I'm teaching a lot. Ah, it could be worse. A lot worse. So, no complaints.

The "Romantic Figures in the Garden" class? Oh, heh, that's my fancy name for outdoor clothed figure/portrait painting. It is truly a challenge and an amazing study of light to paint portraits outdoors, so I wanted to offer that. It needed a fancier name, though - a "hook", if you will. A class with the generic name of "Outdoor Clothed Figure/Portrait Painting" just doesn't sing, you know? It would appeal to some, but we (the director of the school and I) need more than the interest of some people to fill the class.

Linda, as always, your comments on my work are much appreciated, good or bad. I must admit, though, you've got a far better touch with this kind of work... I recently saw (elsewhere) some of the workshop pieces you'd done with Mr. Whitaker. I'm gonna put you on the spot and ask you to post them. Makes mine look like moose drool.

Maria Nemchuk · 05-16-2005, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob Sullivan

The "Romantic Figures in the Garden" class? Oh, heh, that's my fancy name for outdoor clothed figure/portrait painting. It is truly a challenge and an amazing study of light to paint portraits outdoors, so I wanted to offer that. It needed a fancier name, though - a "hook", if you will.

Rob, indeed the name does make me want to take the class