Ramon Hurtado: Recent Work and Demos

[Ramon Hurtado]

Hi everyone,

I've been missing for awhile, but I'm back and I'll be updating regularly. A lot has happened since my last posts around here, so I figure I'd start a brand new thread. You can still see my old one here. I've also relaunched my blog.

Without further ado, here's some work from the past months.

-Ramon

[Marian Rowling]

Hey Ramon it's great to see your lovely drawings again. i especially like the feet. Yours was the second sketchbook that I was reading, (John Hardesty aka Mindcandy man was first) that totally convinced and inspired me to start drawing myself.

Hope you and Lamb managed to get the money together to visit Robert Liberace and hope you keep posting here.

[Arnaldo Rivera]

Hope to see you keep posting here as well, great work!

[Cory Hinman]

Dude, bigger scans, BIGGER scans! and welcome back!

[Ramon Hurtado]

Thanks for the comments guys, it's nice to hear from familiar folks!

Marian: Thanks! We're actually still studying with him for one more term! We've managed to scramble around and get funds from generous donations, grants and working awful day jobs haha.

Arnaldo: Thanks!

Cory: I have larger images at my blog, you can check it out here

These are some figure paintings from Rob's class. He's been tremendously helpful in developing my work further. He's been pushing me to instill more energy in my studies and keep seeking the character of the model. No lazy observation here! It's really challenging mentally, but it's the only way to reach the same level of mastery as Rob or Fortuny.

The landscape is my last study of sunlight back home in Mexico. I can't wait to go back and paint in the brilliant desert sun!

[kevinwueste]

your Rob time is paying off for sure. Good on you !

-Kevin

[cquinn]

Agreed that Robs lessons are paying off. I d love to hear some insights about what he s teaching you. Like what kind of mindset does he teach you to approach the drawing with? What to pay attention to the most? Stuff like this.

[esra_art]

You are always an inspiration to me Ramon, thank you for keeping on posting .. hope to accept me as a friend to you

[Ramon Hurtado]

Thanks for the comments guys, it's an exciting time for me. I was recently awarded the Stacey scholarship, Rob's Spring term class just started and I'm planning some new paintings for my return to LA. For those interested in the Stacey, I posted my entries on my blog.

Kevin: Thanks! Rob is my favorite living painter and I'm sure you already know what a great guy he is. A few weeks ago he was walking out the door with one of his originals (after a faculty show at the League) and we ran after him to catch a glimpse. He very graciously showed his painting to us and explained some of the reasoning behind it. It was amazing.

Cquinn: Rob's instruction is very personalized, but I can offer you my experience and some general concepts that he teaches. With me, Rob has been stressing really looking carefully at the model and finding the maximum amount of variation in the forms. He does not want to see any gross generalizations, or areas flattening out. He encourages us to capture the specific character of the model, and to keep the painting or drawing dynamic throughout the process. He's helped me to slow down and try to add more and more volume to my work, while still being adventurous in the paint handling. We both share a strong interest in the work of Fortuny and the Hispano-Roman school, so I think he's been keeping that in mind when he critiques my work.

In practice, he stresses a very energetic gesture and getting your placement right with an "animated stickfigure". He then maps out the shadow shapes in a simplified way using just umber. However, the shapes are simple but not generic, it's all about character. Depending on the time available to him, he's work with the shadow edges more or less, sometimes getting a lot of information just in the umber stage.

After that he places a single skin middle tone throughout the lights, then adds higher lights, then some halftones. He is constantly keeping the painting dynamic and adding more information. The paint is pretty thin. Then he begins to work with the paint that's already there, pushing and pulling, always keeping the gesture and structure in mind.

I recommend his DVDs, he explains it much better than I do!

Esraa: Thanks for the kind words Esra, you bet I accept your friendship!

Here are some more paintings from the model. The first two are 4 hours. The last one is 4 hours in with 8 more to go.

[Marian Rowling]

Wow Ramon well done on winning your Stacey Scholarship. That's so great for you and well deserved in my opinion. Now you have the funds to continue your studies with Rob, it is going to be so exciting to watch you progress. I especially liked your townscape painting for your entries, although they all look damn fine.

Well done again.

[all things lost]

Love the energy in your figure paintings, how large are the canvases?

[cquinn]

Hey thanks for the insights. Great that his instruction is highly personalized as thats why your there paying him . What you say makes a lot of sense though. Clearly he s going to stress a dynamic gesture a ton as I would argue thats his specialty. Pushing to find the small variations in forms also makes a lot of sense its something I ll be pushing to do with my own drawings more. I also agree that getting a lot of info down in the first stages is pretty key. Its when the drawing/painting is most malleable and easily the most important as the rest of the details just sort of hang on the structure you ve laid down.

What DVD would you say explains this stuff the best? They arent cheap so I don t really wanna get them all thats for sure but I could be interested in getting one of them as his teachings seem unique and his painting/drawing is powerful.


Good job on the latest studies and congrats on the scholarship!

[merl1n]

Very nice work! I would just calm down the background here and there.

[Ramon Hurtado]

Thanks everyone!

Marian: Thanks Marian! The landscape is the only composition I've had time to work on while I've been in DC. It's actually still in progress, I'm hoping to finish it soon. Lots of Fortuny influence there, it's been a great learning experience so far.

all things lost Thanks! These are all done on small boards, ranging from 8x12in to 12x16. I've been using the smaller boards lately since time is limited in class and I'm eventually going to be working in a fairly small format anyway.

cquinn Thanks, I'm glad you found the information helpful. I haven't seen them all. but I really like his "Figure Sketch in Oil" DVD, he really gets into how to craft one of his small figure paintings. "The Figure in Motion" DVD is really good too, and is a good intro to his drawing philosophy. The Art League recently posted one of his demos on youtube, it's a good intro, but he goes into much more detail in the dvds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHauI...ure=plpp_video

Tomas Thanks, maybe I'm having too much fun with those backgrounds haha.

Here another one from the model workshop. About 4 hours, 8x12in.

[cquinn]

Great thanks. Those where the 2 I was thinking looked like the most relevant and useful. That youtube clip is interesting. Hes such a messy painter lol but somehow it comes together.

Good joerb on the latest painting as well btw.

[Marian Rowling]

Great job on this last one Ramon, you have captured so much weight and form. Thanks also for the free painting demo link. It made me want to learn painting so much that I went and brought three videos, even though I can't really afford them! That said please feed back to Rob if you can that I would be willing to pay to watch online workshops like this.

Also, I saw your comment about continuing to work small and I wondered why that was? Is it because you are planning to do mainly alla prima works, so you want to keep your painting fast and fresh?

[Ramon Hurtado]

cquinn: It's amazing to see him paint. The demo in the video is an extremely quick one for him. I just got back from class, today's demo was extremely controlled and subtle, regardless of what he does, he's always in control of the painting. It's really exciting.

Marian: Thanks Marian, it's one of the better figure paintings I've done. I'll pass on the word, but I don't know if he'll do anything like that again, he seems extremely busy all the time.

As for keeping paintings small, there are a few reasons. My favorite painters worked fairly small and I too enjoy the challenge of working at that scale. I eventually want to work on multi-figure genre scenes at say 30x40 inches at the most. The figures in a painting like this would likely not exceed 12 inches in height (and would often be much smaller), so I need to learn to work at that size.

I plan to paint very directly, but I view quick alla prima paintings as studies, rather than finished work. Above all, I love small, highly worked up figures painted with lots of energy.

Something like Fortuny's La Vicaria (which is, interestingly enough, painted on an old door)

[Marian Rowling]

Thanks Ramon, that is interesting, especially Fortuny painting on an old door! I guess once you have the skills most surfaces become a potential canvas for painting.

[cquinn]

Do you know somewhere online where I can find good images of Fortuny s work? I d love to check out some of his drawings/paintings as well as stuff done by other artists in his school/movement or whatever you want to call it.

Thanks for the infos. Very helpful

[bjoern3000]

Connor:
http://rationalpainting.org/index.php?topic=1167.0



Ramon: great work! Thanks for sharing!

[Tarsier]

These are great! My teacher studied under Rob, and I am a fan of his work as well. I love the drawings and the figure with his back to you especially.

[cquinn]

Connor:
http://rationalpainting.org/index.php?topic=1167.0



Ramon: great work! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks,

Seems dude can draw .

[Ramon Hurtado]

We started a new pose at Rob's this week. I decided to focus on modeling form more thoroughly this time around, working with a limited palette of white, yellow ochre, cad yellow, alizarin and black. It's been really fun and very instructive to work on volume, without worrying too much about extravagant color. I spent most of the 4 hour session on the umber drawing, then worked on the torso during the last hour and a half. I'll post more shots of this at is progresses.

[Marian Rowling]

It looks good Ramon, you can really feel the form of all the muscle's. Can I ask is your umber painting dry before you start painting over it, and also in your palette why did you choose cad yellow and yellow ochre? I've only just started painting so palettes and colour mixing is all fairly new to me, I wonder if you paint a figure with the similar skin tones in the same light if the skin tone mixes would be made of the same colours? Sorry so many questions.

[RomanDavis]

Your modeling and sense of form are really great.

You might want to watch out for stiffness. There's a little- not a lot, you're clearly very good- that creeps into your studies.This is most obvious in your studies of feet, which you might want to study a bit more, more because they are very easy to avoid drawing in a life session than anything else.

Really good work. Glad to have seen it.

[Ramon Hurtado]

Marian: The umber drawing was mostly dry because the surface I was working on was a bit too absorbent. It's better if it's not completely dry, so you can knit the halftones into the mass of umber shadows (although that's irrelevant if you're pushing further and working out the color of your shadows.) The point is to keep the paint wet so you can model it and fuse the edges. My palette is really basic, all you need is a yellow, a red, a blue and white to mix most of the things you'll see, especially in an indoor setting. Yellow ochre is a good workhorse yellow because it's not particularly strong, I keep cadmium around in case I need a more chromatic yellow.

Roman: Thanks!

More work on my study of Zeki, this week I worked out the head. Next week, onto the lower arm and legs!

[Mane]

lovely construction dude, nice use of those cooler colours as well.

[Andrew Sonea]

Hey Ramon,

Big fan of yours! I love all your oils and think you will go very far (you're so lucky to be working under Liberace!).

I did notice some slight perspective issues with the last head of yours. It's some pretty minor stuff, but I know that you are very intent on achieving as high as level as you can so I thought I'd point out what I saw could use some work.

Hope this helps!

[Saraiva]

I would LOVE to see some original compositions from you. Your figure work is fabulous.

[Marian Rowling]

Many thanks Ramon, again! I'm finding it really interesting to watch you working you way through this one.