Model John
 

This was a 3-hour session with the model in a tricky pose. The Passantino lesson was about caricature and capturing the essence of the sitter quickly. I had a bear of a time with the foreshortened arm. He started out looking very Lincoln-esque and ended up appearing rather bored. Maybe I captured too much?

The size is 16" x 20."

Jeanine: Still, that is a lot to capture in 3 hours and for the time, it looks good to me. I like the feeling of space behind him, and the composition works well as he appears to be right on a golden mean line.

Thank you, Michael! I did have my Fibonacci spiral viewer handy.

Jeanine,

It's difficult to anticipate the pose for an open session and have the right canvas size. For that reason I usually bring something in the proportion of your canvas and a second canvas closer to square. In the case of this painting the latter might have been a better choice. In any case it may have served your purpose to have used a vertical orientation. It's our great instinct to try to squeeze the figure into the frame and therefore cut the figure short as we see in the upper arm and torso. The model tends to sit on the bottom edge of the canvas and is able to do so by trimming his derri