Decktilldawns's Drawing's and Paintings

[DecktillDawn]

Hello all. My name is Jeremy Deck and I have been self-training for the past year. I started out painting photorealism (or attempted to) in high school. I primarily worked from photos for reference and have been trying to break that habit. I started out with a few Bargue studies and have been trying to translate that knowledge to the cast/still life.

I attended the Academy of Realist Art (formerly MJAS) in Toronto last spring for a short one month stay. I
I hope to return to Canada again in a few months to continue my studies.

Please let me know what you think, I would love to hear opinions from some of the amazing talent I see here on this forum. The Fortuny copy of the boy with a flute, and the still life are unfinished. Each has about 10-20 hours to go, so if anything is obviously wrong, hopefully it is already on my list of things to correct, but please point it out just in case.

I've wanted to join this forum for a while, just never did. I've been lurking though, and I am really impressed with what some of you do.

Anyways, cheers.

[Grumbledook]

you sure have a good grasp how to convey a realistic view

[darkwolfb87]

Hello Jeremy,

I would love to see some close-ups of the still-life painting. May I ask what color palette was used? From what I can see I think the painting would greatly benefit from a looser interpretation of soft and lost edges, because right now the objects are rather flat and repelling from each-other due to the razor-sharp contours. My eyes are also searching for more reflected orange light.

~ Stephen

[DecktillDawn]

Thanks for responding guys. Yeah the still life isn't finished. I think the background needs some atmosphere to it and the edges need a little attention like you said, I had to photoshop a little glare out of the photo and flattened the . Hoping to get back to work on that one sometime later this week.

For my still life palette: Van dyke brown, ivory black, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, viridian, terre verte, vermillion, rose madder, burnt umber, burnt sienna, cad orange, cad yellow, yellow ochre

[darkwolfb87]

Thanks for posting those, I really appreciate it I want to direct you to these two posts:

http://conceptart.org/forums/showpos...&postcount=254

http://conceptart.org/forums/showpos...&postcount=259

Despite the level of refinement you have taken this piece, I think it is still far more important to keep the overall effect in mind rather than perfecting each object. I gotta run right now but I'd like to know what you think about these two posts!


~ Stephen

[DecktillDawn]

Yeah man I think after I'm all through with my second painting of the pitcher and sugar bowl (still unfinished) I'm really going to focus on unifying the piece, like the edges and tonal relationships.

I think the thing in the first post about making a light transition in the background would be great advice for my still life. I think it lacks atmosphere, which might be all it needs to really set it off. If you or anyone has any advice on how I could treat the edges to bring the whole effect together please put it out there.

thanks again.

[darkwolfb87]

Here's what I would prefer to see: I would consciously decide to make the peaches the focal point, and place the sharpest edges where the white arrows are pointing (areas on the peaches of greatest value contrast facing the light source). The rest of the edges need to be loose enough to "bleed" into each other.

The highlights on the rim of the container are the most distracting; I would emphasize about a centimeter of the rim as a highlight and make the rest of it fall away into softer edges and darker value. I also added more red, does this look closer to the actual painting?

The main point I am trying to make is that the painting will not improve by adding more to it, you need to take away a lot of the minute details if atmosphere is going to have a chance to flow through this.

~ Stephen

[k4pka]

I agree with the above. It will be exciting to see your work when you start to learn how to subordinate. Right now, they are pretty much how a camera sees. And a camera can do it far better than you can.

[Dizon]

good work. I'm sucker for atelier stuff. Is that figure drawing a Bargue copy or an actual model???

[DecktillDawn]

Darkwolf, thanks a ton for the example and I couldn't agree with you more. I have a still life that I'm in the middle of and I'm really trying to avoid getting too wrapped up in the details this time around. I'm also trying to use really large brushes to help me decide which details are necessary.

wow I'm really glad you sent that example, I cant wait to do that work on those edges. Although I feel that it may be too late to eliminate some details, as the still life is no longer set up. I'd hate to try to simplify too much without reference to nature.

Patdzon, Thanks, the figure is actually a copy by a Spanish academic artist by the name of Mariano?? Fortuny.

[Seedling]

Beautiful work! I'm curious: what are your career goals in art?

[DecktillDawn]

Hey there seedling. Back in high school I was really into 3d animation and then I started getting into oil painting. I received a scholarship in 3d animation which I declined to pursue traditional art.

I would like to make a living off of portraiture and eventually do large compositions based on mythology and maybe history painting

[Seedling]

Well, cool. :-) I look forward to seeing more of your progress.

[Dizon]

I find it amazing you already know how to paint such an amazing still-life in spite of your one month stay.

[thinairart]

Jeremy- Good to see you here on CA! I remember seeing your work over on WC in the Classical forum and being impressed. Your work is exceptional, your off to an awesome start in your studies. Do you have the "Drawing Course" book from ACR? Great resource for the Bargue plates... I copied one myself (PL 14) not to long ago, very hard work but well worth it. If I remember from your WC posts, your working in carbon. Great medium, although it just about made me want to burn all my art materials and take up knitting. I still have not got the handle of using brushes to blend carbon, my attempts come out rather cloudy. So kudos to you for such fine tonal work with your Bargue plates, I'm inspired to try again. Was your still life painted from a setup or from a photo? Very nice work there, you have quite the eye for detail, and your technique seems very well developed. Great to see you here, if you have not thought about it already, you might want to get a sketchbook started over in the Sketchbook forum. Would be great to follow along with your studies as you progress.

A.

[Parker 923]

great work, I look forward to seeing more of it.

[Cryptorchild]

Hi Deck,
Thats some really great work you have there. I really like the way you have dealt with the bend of light in the glass container. Any advice on that subject would be much appreciated

Keep it up!

[dimitris c. milionis]

Jeremy Deck, great work, how long did it take you to getthe Bargues to that level?

[ivow]

DecktillDawn

I know this is cheeky, but could you tell me what your first drawing is of? Is it a famous piece? I would really like to see the original reference, because i just couldnt resist drawing it, and drawing from your drawing seems a bit wrong. ( I messed it up anyway, but finished it)

[Ramon Hurtado]

Hey there Jeremy, first of all welcome to the forums, like you said, lots of great people here and immense amounts of talent to boot. Your work has a wonderful soft quality to it, good stuff. Sorry to hear about your family tragedy, hope you can go to Canada soon, but have you considered studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the mean time? At least they have an extensive collection of casts to study. Anyway, keep it up!

[DecktillDawn]

I'm sorry that it has been a while since I have posted. I have been spending the past 4 days or so building a new easel and setting up a new studio space. The easel should be done tomorrow and I should have an update on the peaches still life.

reidaj- Hello, thanks for stopping by. The instructors at the Academy told me that they usually don't let their students use "tools" for the bargue plates. This is only because it is just another hurdle to cross for the student when they should be foremost concerned with form and proportion, without added distractions. They said the same thing about the student's trouble with keeping it "neat" and getting that cloudy effect. My still-life was done sight-size from life. No photos.

Cryptorchild- The bends in the light should be thought of as abstact geometrical shapes of varying color mixtures. This is all about accurate
observation of smaller proportions contained withing larger ones.

Ivow- Don't sweat it. It is actually just a litho plate from the Bargue book. If you don't know what that is, just google it.

Dimitris, the head of Ariadne took about 120 hours or so, and the man with the beard took about 80-90.

Fatkid- I've got a pile of gestures lying around from when I was at the academy but I haven't had much of a chance to do much work from the model at home. I must say that the measuring with sight-size translates VERY well to a comparative measurement system. Drawing from life is the thing I am longing for most right now, the figure that is.

Pancho- Thanks for the condolences, my 16yr old brother passed in a car accident a year or so ago. He was an awesome kid.
About the PAFA thing, thier cast collection is pretty sweet. I think I might be moving back to downtown Philadelphia when I get back from Toronto this summer, so I'm going to have to think about that. But that depends on how long I stay in TO.

Talk to you later guys. Thanks for replying.

[Parker 923]

Decktilldawn, if you dont mind, do you have any advice for rendering a shiny metal surface (like the dish holding your peaches in the still life) as far as layering, etc. goes?

I've been having a difficult time with this lately.

[DecktillDawn]

Parker, both the sugar bowl and the shiny dish were painted fairly directly over a n inked drawing. I only really used glazes to deepen the reflection of the peach in the metal, and only lightly.

The best tip I can send your way would be to focus on shapes. First get the outline, then try to make one or two accurate divisions and keep refining from there. Each shape will have a color an value of its own, but most of it is fairly monochrome so you could do a grisaille first and apply colors to simplify things.

Here are a few pieces I did back in high school. Back then reflections in metal and glass were my main focus and I did many pieces to try to come up with a method for painting them. The frist one was my very first oil painting from 11th grade, and the motorcycle was done with a grissaille to give you an example. All oil on canvas except the last which is watercolor. Sorry but I don't have any WIP shots.

[darkwolfb87]

Impressive high school skills Now I would like to see you tackle small still life paintings in 2 or 3 hours max, focusing primarily on the color relationships. As with the peach still life, these paintings are placing the utmost importance on refining individual objects and carving outlines instead of trying to capture the still life as a unified whole. I think doing 2-3 hour studies will get you away from detailing and worrying about edges. Being able to suggest a spoon in five brush strokes instead of fifty will teach you how far you can push details before the spoon loses its clarity and impact.

~ Stephen

[DecktillDawn]

Darkwolf, thanks a lot for stopping by to post again. I still have to give an update on those peaches, I'd like your opinion on my progress with that one.

It's strange that you say the thing about the 2-3 hour still life thing, because I was actually going to try something like that in the next few days or so, something really small though. I have been doing a bit of plein air as well and I feel that though I would never leave a finished piece in such a rough state, it is helping to develop a more frank style of applying paint.

I have been looking at some of the work of artists I most admire and I am starting to come to the realization that part of my problem with painting loosely may be the size that I am working at (sight-size lately). For instance this detail from an Alma Tadema painting is much smaller than life and I would say it is probably a balance between the detail that I use right now, and what you would like to see. To me though, this amount of simplification is exactly what I would hope to achieve someday.

About the size, I really look forward to working on a piece that is much larger and not so scaled to life. Then I can feel less like I am robbing the eye of detail that at a proper viewing distance to the actual object (2x the largest dimension of the work, for the peaches thats like 3 feet) would be more than visible. I'm sure there is a knack to finding a good compromise but I think that has a lot to do with experience too.

I respect painters like Hals and Sargent very much, but I love the academics even more. I think it lies more in the temperament of the man holding the brush than in what is truly the RIGHT or WRONG way to paint. Accepting this small amount of difference in the realm of realism alone can probably stop quite a few fist fights from erupting amongst otherwise like-minds.

At the academy there were a few really talented students that said that eventually they wished to leave their works in the "first painting" stage without doing much second-painting or glazing at all for very valid reasons. The looseness of stroke shows a type of confidence that we all would like to possess someday. The instructors on the other hand, did not seem too fond of any type of mannerism by the student. Their attitude was that when you are training, you paint AS YOU SEE (while still employing selective-focustechniques). Later on the stylistic tendencies will show through NO MATTER WHAT, because each one of us is different. Even when two very skilled painters try to represent the same subject it will turn out differently in subtlety and nuance while the same larger, more important pieces of information underlie both. Harold Speed says something very similar in the book attached to both of our signatures.

If someday you can paint as well as Sargent, Rembrandt, or Hals and someday I can paint as well as Alma-Tadema, Bouguereau, or Leighton I don't think either one of us would have anything other than respect for the other. At least I wouldn't. I hope that everyone on here that seems to be put off by my somewhat-academic attention to detail knows that I am by no means where I want to be
with painting at all. I'm doing my best here. Maybe I'm not, but I'm definitely trying to.

[darkwolfb87]

No problem, I look forward to watching you progress

If you want to give it a try, here is how I'm doing color studies with my teacher with the intention of breaking away from sight-size and a limited palette:

The still life set-up: A handful of small objects in close proximity on a cloth backdrop. To make things more interesting, everything in the still life is high chroma and reflective, but not transparent to make things simpler. This is under its own artificial light.

Easel and palette set-up: Stand 5-7 feet from the still life, painted on the smallest canvas you are comfortable with. Before starting, pick an interesting area of the still life, crop it and zoom in. I like to crop away perfect geometric shapes so I can focus on the abstract. Between yourself and the easel, put a tall wire rack or table to lay your full-color palette, solvent, box of rags, etc. The table encourages painting with your arm fully extended and constantly taking a step back to make comparisons. The easel/palette set-up is under its own artificial light.

With colors, we are primarily trying to push chroma to the fullest extent in which the study will still hold together. We start with a block-in to cover the canvas, trying to apply the most accurate local color for each object from which to refine further. Doing studies in this manner intensifies the strengths of chroma and value, so that by working under natural lighting conditions these effects and interactions can be more easily understood.

[Ramon Hurtado]

Jeremy, your copy of that Alma-Tadema painting is amazing, i love the rendering of the plate that the eggs rest on, and the hands are great too....how big is this piece?

I think you make some great points regarding academic styles vs looser/impressionist wasy of representation, I never really understood why people got into heated arguments about such matters. Personally, I dont think I've disciplined enough to pursue well done academic studies, so msot of my work looks very loose, but i think part of it is my lack of command over oils at this point, definitely something i would like to pursue in the future.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

[DecktillDawn]

Oh man, thats not a copy. LOL, I just posted that to make reference to his work as an example of what I would like to achieve. I'll agree with you that the whole thing is pretty amazing.

I feel bad, sorry to get your hopes up dude!

I should also say that your work is awesome. I was just checking it out.

Darkwolf, sorry I didn't see your post sooner and coincidentally I have been working on a small still life with pretty much the exact setup you recommended. I really like what you say about painting with your arm fully extended as I've been trying that out a lot for this one. large sweeping strokes seem to show so much more confidence when produced this way. I am also using a limited palette that consists of Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue, and Flake White. I'm going to try to post a progress photo of that one when I get my camera back sometime tonight.

Later guys.

[Ramon Hurtado]

hahaha, oh man, my bad. Hey dude, but your work is so good it was easy to make that mistake! thanks for the comment regarding my work, I havent been working enough, just getting back to it lately. Look forward to seeing your new still life.

-Ramon

[k4pka]

"If someday you can paint as well as Sargent, Rembrandt, or Hals and someday I can paint as well as Alma-Tadema, Bouguereau, or Leighton I don't think either one of us would have anything other than respect for the other."

Might I just say that this is brilliantly said.