Back to school, back to blogging!

 I´m back to school and thus it´s time to post more regulary on my blog. Last week my teacher Farigh taught us how to mix oil paint.

 "At one time all paint was made in the studio, usually by the apprentices from their first year and itinerant journeymen. Due to the deep understanding every artist had of the properties of the paints they were making it was easy for the artists to produce artworks of intense beauty and great durability that testify to the skills and knowledge gained grinding colors for their master in their early years."
Tony Johansen, director, East Sydney Academy of Art

If your dying to find out all the details regarding paint making you can visit this webpage: http://www.paintmaking.com/index.html

We used pigments from Italy and linseed oil.

On a grinding slab made of glass you put a pile of pigments and atomize it with a palette knife. You make a hole in the pile and pour linseed oil into it and you mix it together with the knife. With a muller (glaslöpare) you complete the process of grinding with circular movements. 

This is the final result. It´s good exercise for your arms.

At this stage of the process I jokingly  said: "And then you take an empty tube of Kalles Kaviar and try to squeeze the paint into it!?" Well, my teacher reached for something in a box and then held up a small, empty tube. I had no idea there were empty tubes you could purchase!

There are of course bigger sizes of tubes as well. You use  the palette knife when you lovingly

stuff the tube with your own mixed oil paint.

It´s a shame I won´t be able to use my freshly made oil paint for a while. I´m a second year student so I´m only allowed to draw. I´m now making a full figure drawing of Lasse, our model. I have to make a post about him later, he is hilarious. 

This exercise is about, as always, seeing and putting down on paper what I see. I have to measure the model and get the proportions right. I compare the length and the width of the head with the length and width of the various limbs. I measure how many heads that fit into the height of the model. I squint and I measure and I squint and I sigh and I draw a line on the paper. I draw straight lines, simplifying the image. Forget about the curves of the muscles at this stage, what is important is to get the construction right. 

Our model is posing for 30 minutes then he takes a break (he always says:breaky-breaky when the alarm goes off). The whole session is 4 x 30 minutes and he will stand in this position for a couple of weeks. 

One last thing: Do you know what this is? It´s a tool that I use all the time while drawing. Please let me know if you do have the answer.