February Newsletter

We made it through February! In many ways, February seemed just like an extension of January - it was full of more unprecedented LA rain, colds (seriously I didn’t know a household could go through so many tissues), and more home organizing. But it also had it’s differences. For one, not only did it rain, it SNOWED. In Glendale! It’s something I’ve always wanted - though my preference would have been before Christmas to really add to the vibe - and never thought I would see. For two, I took on more pet portraits than originally planned which led to a decent amount of painting. It did however mean I didn’t have time to get to the landscape painting I’ve been wanting to work on….so that is officially added to my March agenda.

And for three, voyageLA.com did a nice little write-up about me and my art that you can read right here! They are so sweet, and I love that they focus on bringing attention to small local businesses that might be otherwise overlooked.

If you have the time, you should poke around their website - they have tons and tons of info on hidden gems and small business all over southern California.

[left photo credit: Ali Winston]

While I didn’t get around to the landscape I wanted to work on, I did however get some human head drawing practice in. There are tons of different methods out there, but I decided to focus specifically on the Loomis method for now. If you’re unfamiliar with it and interested, you can learn more about it here. But to briefly summarize, it was invented in the 1940s by Andrew Loomis, and consists of 3-dimensional shapes and grids that help break down every human head.

I still have many hours of practicing ahead of me to get to a place I want to be in terms of drawing people, but I love having a sort of formula I can use to break down every head with. It’s easy to get caught up in features and what you think they should look like, and that can really throw off the scale of a drawing or it’s likeness to the subject.

But with the Loomis method I’m able to think about the construction of the head, and look at each feature as a 3-D shape rather than an eye, or a nose, or an ear, or hair. I’m confident this knowledge will translate into oil portraits, and will make the process of building the portrait much easier! Stay tuned, I have a couple “muses” lined up to model for my portraits so I promise, they are coming soon!

For the month of March, I’m looking forward to practicing more Loomis heads (and progressing to actual people rather than generic faces), and getting that landscape painting done. Thanks for reading, and hope to see you here next month!