Traditional Academic Drawing & Painting
A
lan has an extensive traditional academic training background. He studied at RIT, SVA, John Frederick Murray School of Art, Art Students League of New York. Alan was a regular at life drawing sessions at the Salmagundi Club, Spring Studio, and Art Students League.
While in R.I.T, Alan found John Murray at the School of Visual Arts continuing education on weekends. Alan took courses with John all summer and then went to John’s school in Rockville Center, NY where he trained extensively in figure drawing and painting. The environment in the school was one of achieving success and educating. Alan says “I have never found or heard of any other school like this. Everyone is helpful and wants to learn everything, it’s a quest for knowledge”
Alan trained under John F. Murray for roughly six years. John trained Alan in The Reilly Method, the practice and science of drawing and painting. This training dates back to Jean Leon Gerome at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. The initial student palette had four rows and 10 columns. It has a row of gray tones that had to be matched to the class version which was a 3″ by 15″ painted piece of illustration board or masonite with the values painted on and the students needed to match the values (see image below). It was not intended to be used professionally, but some people did rely on it. Alan switched to an open palette sometime within his third or fourth year with John.
Then it has a row of yellows, browns (umbers), and a row of reds, the fourth row was to combine the three rows above and make the flesh tones and use reds and grays to neutralize. So veins and areas of the hair are neutralized and not using blue paint but have the illusion of being blue. This trained the eyes to see values in nature better. As John would say:
“Realistic art is more abstract than abstract art. Abstract art is trying to be abstract. In painting, we have to abstract nature. In nature, we have an infinite number of values. In painting we have roughly 10 values and the lightest we can get is white paint, yet in nature light can blind us. In nature, we have the absence of light. In painting, the darkest we can get is black with light on it.”
-John Frederick Murray
John took several students to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and several other museums and trained his students to see and understand what really went into the old master paintings and those of academic painters like William Bouguereau. While there were many teachers out there, none seemed to have the depth of understanding that John Murray had. Copying Govert Flink’s bearded man with a velvet cap, John would point out the technique and how to see it, hot the paint is underneath in layers, and how color was put into underlayers and left to dry before any other paint was applied. How the light values were built-up heavier with paint.
Below is Alan’s academic student work, drawing, and painting. He credits John Frederick Murray with 80% of his academic training.
Academic Sculpture Drawing
Academic sculpture drawing was done at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alan spent many days in the Met drawing the sculptures.
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux - Ugolino and His Sons
Drawing of the sculpture done at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. While drawing this, Alan was photographed by the NY Times and put into the Sunday paper. Pencil on paper.
Drawing From Life - At Art Students League of NY
20 min life drawing Friday session at the Art Student League of NY. Circa 1992. Pencil on paper.
The Student Wash In
Oil painting portrait from life. Academic underpainting. Oil on Canvas.
Oil Painting Live Model
This is a figurative oil painting done with a live model in the 90s at one of the art schools at John F. Murray's class. Oil on Canvas.
All Works © 1987-2020 Alan Rabinowitz.