I haven’t posted a picture of my ecorche in a while. Here I’ve added the muscles of the lower leg and cleaned up a few of the thigh muscles a bit. I’ve also added the latissimus dorsi. Work on this has been an interesting experience. It really is quite useful to have a tactile memory of the major muscles of the body. It is an extremely rewarding exercise and I am really looking forward to doing a larger and more elaborate ecorche in the future.
As I mentioned previously, we’ve been working on an open-form painting for the final assignment in Martha’s History of Painting Techniques class. I really was having difficulty in losing the contour of the form. By the end of the class I really just felt like I was assaulting the canvas. It has an interesting quality and I was really starting to build up some beautiful impasto. I believe we’ll have one more week to work on these paintings; it will be interesting to see if I can work out the balance between a mark-making vernacular and still have an aesthetic representation.
– Jeremy