Like Flame

So, today I finished a cute little painting, I think she's about 4 x 4 inches.
I got the wood at the beginning of last semester, I don't remember if it was from Blick or Utrecht, although it doesn't matter, because they're one and the same now. Maybe it was Soho Art materials or Pearl.
I got the thing for free, and I loved it right away. The finish on the wood is so perfectly smooth, I touched it a little when I got it, but not too much, 'cuz I don't know if the friction of my skin could ruin it or something.
I knew I wanted to do some drawing on it, something beautiful. Like a week ago, I got the balls to do it and she turned up.
The Alizarin Orange color that I used on her, was also for free, I got it as a sample along with Viridian and a blue color. It's really expensive material, apparently, they're Williamsburg.
So, I wanted to use the Alizarin Orange and I did.
As I worked on her, she kept looking to me like made out of fire and I went with that and she really reminded me of a poem that I stumbled upon in the black hole that is tumblr, that sometimes is not so bad.
The poem is this one:
"She twists like a flame.
Her back, a sierra of bone,
her hips, a sandstone canyon.
And I can believe her gaze,
born from a thousand years dreaming
and as dew-cool as moonlight,
is only for me."
—Eliot Khalil Wilson


I remember the line being "she twists like flame", which I like more than that one, so she's titled "Like Flame". And here she is:


I have also launched (sort of) a website, I'm going to add "Like Flame" to it in a bit, I'm slowly adding things to it and I'm posting it discreetly, here it is: gabrielahandal.com, because I have a lot of imagination.
And I've also put up an Etsy shop, which is also called Gabriela Handal Arte, because I have a lot of imagination.

Obtuse

Today, I finished this Cast Drawing with Roberto Osti assignment. I drew the ear using a method called sight-size which was a pain in the ass, I seriously teared up, because I was so frustrated and angry at some point when I was starting out the drawing.
You're meant to put your paper right close to your cast, which is your reference and step back like six or seven feet and measure, so you walk back and forth, measuring and putting reference points in your paper, until you feel like you have enough reference points to just connect the dots and start working more and more detail into the drawing. You can work as much detail as you want into the drawing, except you have to keep walking back and for over and over again. It's an arduous process, to say the least, but it's a really good observational exercise. It's good to find relationships, points that converge on a single horizontal or vertical line.
I've thought of doing it maybe one more time, just to polish that observational ability, but I don't know if I want to subject myself to that again.
I decided after the third session of work, I think, to just take a fucking picture and take the thing to my studio and work from there, because I was up to my balls of walking back and forth. So, when I started putting on shadows and the ear was basically all drawn, I stopped walking back and forth.
So, my tools were a blending stump, a kneading eraser, an HB pencil and I drew over Canson paper. Whilst I was taking measurements, I was using a knitting needle, and I should have had a plumb line, but fuck that noise. I had enough with the knitting needle.
So here is the final result, I really like it, I'm going to frame it and put it up in my etsy shop, which is called Gabriela Handal Arte, because I have a lot of imagination.

Top Lit

Yesterday, I finished my final for Figure Drawing Intensive with Dan Thompson, here at the New York Academy of Art. The assignment was to choose one of the techniques that we used during the semester and make our final with that, the theme was completely our choice.
So, since I'd never done any of the techniques that we used before (I'd kind of done gesture drawing before, but never the way I did at Dan's class), I had a lot to choose from. Because I'm a big fan of overhead lighting and just really heavy lighting and heavy shadows, I chose the wipeout technique. For this technique, Dan instructed us to buy Canson's Mis Teintes paper and to tone it with charcoal, so this is what I chose.
I chose an orange and a grey colored paper, it's kind of what I saw in my mind's eye, I saw the same image on both papers, both off center, top lit. Self-portraits with my beanie. I've been drawing self portraits on the train, I've done several already, where I'm sitting on the train and I see my reflection on the glass across from me and it's top lit and I just love what I see.
Here is an example:

So for Dan's final, I kind of wanted the self-portraits to make it out of the art journal and become a kind of more finished and polished piece. When I was talking to Dan about it, he told me that I could play with how much of the eyes I wanted to reveal and he also suggested me not to use white for the highlights and lightest lights, he suggested to use something within the color range of the paper. So for the orange one, the lightest color is yellow and ochre and for the grey one, there's just different tones of grey, some blue and a teeny tiny bit of purple.
After a while, I decided (with the constructive criticism of a couple of colleagues and classmates) to treat both of them just slightly different; and so, with the orange one, I decided to go with the whole thing of revealing only part of the eyes and revealed part of the eyelids and with the grey one I played a bit more fantastically with it and drew in a bit of the irises and the pupil. The orange one feels super colorful, the background and the face, I used oranges, yellows and browns. The grey one, I think actually has more color, but doesn't feel colorful at all.
Both of them, I think are cool in the sense that there is that capacity of discovering those details of the eyelids and irises if you look long enough.
Since I've been here in New York, there has been a surprising influx of self-portraits. I generally don't think or care enough to dig deep into why I do certain things, sometimes a "meaning" just happens to come along whilst I'm making the piece and if it does, that's cool, I go with it.
I definitely have found it interesting how I'm suddenly making and wanting to make a bunch of self portraits, although that's definitely not all I'm doing. I haven't read much into the psychology of the self-portrait, maybe I will at some point, but I think that maybe (specifically with the ones in the subway), I'm kind of trying to SEE myself HERE in New York and in this school, just because it doesn't feel real. It feels like a dream or a twilight zone or a parallel dimension. I KNOW that I'm here, I just can't seem to believe it, so the self-portraits in the subway, I think are kind of a way of making myself believe that I am here in this completely foreign and new environment, that I really am living in New York, that I really did move to New York, that I really am studying at the New York Academy of Art.


So here are the drawings:




In other news, I have obtained a domain and I'm working on the website itself, I'm just gonna go with linking it to tumblr. The website address is just going to be gabrielahandal.com, 'cuz I have a lot of imagination.
Either way, don't forget about my Facebook page, which by the way, I got a regular handle for: www.facebook.com/artegabrielahandal, easier to share!
Thank you for reading!

Starving artist/art student

I find myself currently enrolled in the New York Academy of Art's MFA program.
It took me a while to find this school and I don't remember how I stumbled into it's program, somewhere on the internet, probably, but I found it and I started in August.

I liked the program, because of how hands-on and manual it is, there is drawing for the most part and the study of the human figure, which are the two things that I like most.

Here is a picture of the work that I have up in my studio, some of it personal, some of it things that I've done in class, like the bust of Zeus.
I'm on the fourth floor, Studio #7, if you want to come by and set up a studio visit ('cuz I HAS a studio now, after all) by all means let me know and if you are interested in buying anything from me, let me know, too!

Also, I'm on the verge of setting up an Etsy shop, so you'd be able to buy from me from there, too! I'm such a diligent little bee sometimes.
Do remember my Facebook page: Gabriela Handal Arte

Two faces

I finished these two drawings yesterday, using a bic pen over paper.
Right now, I find myself in a place with very dry air and I think that's something that has assisted me a little bit in achieving this smoothness.

For this first drawing, the words "Terráqueo Facial" work as a title of sorts. Looking at her there's something of a globe, with the landscapes and divisions, so her face reminds me of a globe.



This second one started out as a note for a dream that I remembered, it had none of the swirls, no facial features, no mouth, no nose. I just wanted to recreate the pose in the dream and something specific that was happening and once that was out of my head, I decided to make her into almost exactly what you see here, specially the swirly things on her hair.
To me, she's kind of an illustration of a story. Or like the when the first letter of a story that is very ornately illustrated and decorated, or a mixture of both.


Also, something of an update on my page in Facebook, I have now made the handle into this: www.facebook.com/ArteGabrielaHandal, so now it's even easier to share! So, don't you forget to like it and share it with your friends: Gabriela Handal Arte