Shifting Shadows

Human Figure class,second week with male model.

The room I paint in is quite dark. The model is on a raised platform with a light shining from above and to the side. He holds his pose for 20 minutes, then we break for about 10 minutes. He is an excellent model...and very experienced.

At the beginning of each class and after each break, he re-establishes the same pose using marks taped to the floor to show the position of his feet.One hand rests on a pedestal, the other holds a staff behind him. Thus he is somewhat stabilized. The pedestal never moves and he also has a tape mark on the floor to show where to place the tip of the staff. Still, with all of these efforts to re-produce the pose exactly, the slightest deviation in his stance causes the shadows to vary widely. If he takes a breath or shifts slightly, his shadows move and I find that I am looking at light and dark patterns that are not the ones I have been establishing on my canvas.

A human can't become a statue. He breathes, his head, shoulders slump sometimes...if he slightly twists his body, the shadows swing wildly.

One minute, the shadow on his thigh runs in an angle from his hip to his knee. The next, his whole leg is in shadow!

I put the matter to my teacher. He replied:

'There is always a shift when a model poses. Ours is one of the best but I'm sure that standing on one leg has forced him to shift his weight slowly to relieve the strain (some models are so weak that they change very radically all the time). The only way to deal with this is to establish the pose and the shadow shapes right away and then wait for the times when they are most like that initial block in, in order to go into them and add more detail.'

What do I look at when I want to refine my shapes and show reflected light in the shadow areas if the shadows are different from my original ?

At some point during the session the shadows might return to their original pattern...or not.

Consequently, I think there is no real continuity to my shadow patterns. And I don't think I have gotten the pose, the stance right because of that.

I'm used to painting vases and fruit and eggs that sit still. The shadows they create and that fall on them and the surface they are on remain constant.