Progress Report Part 1

Recap of the events that have occurred so far starting from 5/31/2015.

Just wanted to do a quick recap of everything that has happened so far starting from 5/31/2015. First I  want to extend my thanks and appreciation towards Linda Dulay at http://www.bacaa.org who is the founder and owner of Bay Area Classical Artists Atelier. Without her kindness and extensive experience in hosting workshops with some of the most talented artists in the industry Ted Seth Jacobs Workshop would not have been possible.

My journey began with me leaving for France and studying with Ted Seth Jacobs with students from all over the world for 5 weeks. It was quite an enlightening experience as Ted has been my idol in the art field from the get go. Although Ted has matured in age his energy and passion for drawing and painting the human figure has not died down.

I stayed In a small farm town called Les Cerquex Sous Passavat, It is 3 hours from Paris, France. The town itself was a little isolated so for the class to get any food for the week was always an endeavor. We typically carpooled with our monitor Sara and the drive itself was only 15 minutes to the nearest city. We learned to be more cautious with the food that we purchased and to conserve our food when we were running out. Typically towards the end of the week before we would go grocery shopping again we would have dinners together to scrap the food that we had left and make it last. I stayed at a small cow farm with a lovely family the farm itself was called Les Moulin (according to my friend this meant the windmill)

The Head of the household was christophe corrioult him and I had several discussions between my 5 week stay at the farm. He has an interesting story, he always wanted to be an electrician but his dad wanted him to be a farmer, so he was given an ultimatum. Be a farmer or he can leave the house, in the end he chose to be a farmer. His Wife Kristen and him have a son named Sebastian who is VERY polite and very quiet and very tall. I stayed in a very old building which I believe was at LEAST 100 years old. There was so much charm in staying in an old home like that so much history.

Teds class in itself is packed with valuable information regarding light, and color and learning to see accurately not only the figure but learning to see everything! His biggest impact i believe was his method of measuring which was to not use ANYTHING as a form of measurement other then your eyes. This was no sight size, using a stick or a pencil this was only using your eyes and finding the measurements based on that. I asked ted one day what was the one thing that i should take away from his class that would be the most valuable, he told me it was the block in. That is the single most important aspect of drawing. Without the block in being 100% accurate then the entire drawing itself will fall apart. Modeling can come afterwards.

There are certain aspects that I did disagree with on ted seth jacobs method of seeing, which was structure. Now ted talks a lot about the special shapes of everyone and that we must not only copy the portraitistic shapes of each individual but also the portraits of there special shapes. He did mention to the class that studying anatomy was irrelevant and we should only focus on drawing the figure that we see before us however i did hear him mention anatomical names several times. The same concept was also applied to painting, he did mention to the class that we should only paint what we see and not use color charts. Again I know for a fact that in his training as a youth at the Art Students League that he did have training with color charts.

I have also learned that we must take what we can from each artist we study with but also apply our own concepts so we have our own "voice" as artists.

I remember reading in Bougeroue's 1984 montral exhibition catalogue that the reason bougeroue's painting instructor was so popular was that he did not apply his style to the students yet he let them find there own voice and gave only vague ideas for which the students to take and utilize in there own fashion.

Continued on section 2