Michael Newberry - Monthly Studio Update

Monthly Studio Update - July, 2006

body

Studio Update:

A lot a different things have been going on around my studio.

Lovers Jumping is slowly progressing.

But I got over a crucial block, I was having trouble with her head...and now I am delighted and have gone on to model her body more. If you go back to the last studio update, you will see some of the light, dark, and space diagrams I drew over printout of the image...I can't tell how important that is for me to use, it gives me almost a 3d understanding of where everything is, its a great map for the body.

This painting is at a monochromatic stage, I will fully develop the details and light of the whole image and then overlay it in color.

I recently finished this charcoal drawing, 19 x26", Himalayan Flight. It is one of my most finished drawings. Detail and high realism takes an amazing amount of dedication, focus, and time. In this work there is a personal symbolism that really jazzes me and encourages me to fully develop it: The white silk was a gift from Jennifer Jordan who brought it back from her National Geographic production The Women of K-2, on location in the Himalayas (google her). I see the white silk as the mountain peaks. The glass bird is on loan from a wonderful student of mine, Lauren Schwartz, and it is at the top and symbolizing flight. I can never draw the ellipse of a bowl without thinking about the rotation of the planets! So I see this piece as a rising above the planets and ascending to the zenith. Now that idea inspires me to fully realize the image to my limits.

will I like this piece so much that I plan to make a good sized painting of it, about 3x4'. But before I start that I want to make a few color studies in pastel. I tend to think of color differently than most people--for me it has more to do with the color of the light source and shadow hue. Meaning I can make pink highlights and green shadows or vice versa or someother combination. This is especially true when dealing with artificial light as sometimes the reality of it is that you might have a neutral color to the highlight and neutral color to the shadow which makes for exceedingly boring colors!

Here you can see 3 stages of development.

In the early hours,
I met a hooded figure,
It was death and he said:
"I have not come for you."
2006, charcoal on Rives BFK, 19 x 26" Available

I went back into this drawing and dramatized the light and dark. The piece is about mourning and the loss of a great friend who died before his time. When I was drawing the finishing touches I was sobbing. Art is an amazing field of human creativity--if you let it and you pursue it you can utilize the furthest depths of your soul--and the experience is similar to making passionate love but with the difference that you are also creating a thing. Undoubtedly that is where the idea comes from that artworks are one's children.

By the Light of the Silvery Moon, 2006, charcoal on Rives BFK, 16x26". Available

This is another recent charcoal drawing, a very simple image drawn during a life-drawing class I gave, and some private modeling afterwards.

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I recently went to MOMA, and enjoyed seeing Matisse and Picasso, there colors and arrangements are beautiful. I have many oil landscape oil sketches that are lying around my loft...and I couldn't resist going back into these two works.

Modernist Wave, 2006, oil on panel, 12x16". Available

Solitude, 2006, oil on panel, 12x16". Available

In my classes I am often painting and drawing along side my students. This is from a 3-hour afternoon class and I plan to develop it further. It gives the impression that it is a detail shot, but this is the entire image. I enjoyed arranging the composition to stress the four corners and beyond them.

I am proud of my students and their achievements in my classes. I would like to share some their works with you. I can't go into detail here, but each one of them exceeded at the particular assignment.