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I have to admit, I didn’t rent this video, I bought it before I found TVR.
Having shelled out nearly $200, you can believe I wanted my money’s worth, and I feel I’ve gotten it. As a renter, you’ll get a real bargain.
The first thing I learned was that I had been mispronouncing Weistling. But everything else I learned was much more useful.
I’ve rented other videos, and to be honest, if you don’t devote a full six hours to a video you just can’t produce a completely instructional product. This is a very long effort, and it took a week to shoot. Weistling starts with the very basics, including how to stretch the canvas. He leaves nothing out. But remember, this is a painting video. If you come to it with no drawing skills you’ll have a hard time keeping up. Learn to draw, and try painting a while before renting this set. Approach it from a position of some experience.
In the first two DVDs there’s hardly a brush stroke left out. Everything was done on camera. He starts with a simple charcoal sketch and then begins painting the darkest areas and works his way to the light. He tears down some of the beginner myths about color, and explains in detail what’s really important in a painting (hint: color is the least important thing).
If you’ve seen Weistling’s online demonstrations, you might expect him to always paint in this manner: completing the eyes, then moving on to the nose, etc. As he says on his website, that’s a terrible way to paint. He can get away with it because of his years of intense experience, but the rest of us need to pay more attention to the methods on the video.
Surprisingly, he works very slowly. Even early on in the process he uses quite small brushes (big contrast to Scott Burdick’s video). He works carefully and deliberately and he puts the right tone in the right place easily because he is working slowly. If he sees that his color or value is off, it will be apparent after only one small dab has been placed on the canvas, and he corrects it before he continues.
It’s a meticulous process and not one that you’re likely to master easily. But there are some good advantages to his method. First, he considers painting to be an extension of drawing (just the opposite of what David Leffel says... rent a few of these videos and you’ll see there are vastly different opinions out there). Because every stroke of the brush is treated as drawing, each stroke brings the painting more into focus, as he develops form, color, and value simultaneously.
The real meat of the instruction is in the first two disks, and I dare say, you can get a pretty good idea of his methods from renting disk one alone. Watch it several times, practice his methods, and try the other disks. Each disk contains valuable side lessons that you can benefit from, so do yourself a favor and see them all.
This is quite a good video, and Casey is highly skilled. There are almost no quality videos about drawing, and charcoal in particular, so this really is a must-see.
He introduced me to methods I had never considered, such as the "charcoal sock" which puffs charcoal dust on the page. This is what he uses to start the drawing, to keep it general and light. He then develops the center of interest, and works out from there. Casey uses methods such as sprinkling charcoal dust on the page, then spraying it with acetone. He also manipulates the image with a paintbrush dipped in acetone.
The video loses a point for being a bit stingy. The actual instructional part of the DVD is 41 minutes long. Come on, Casy. There was plenty of opportunity to give more info, discuss various techniques, and share more knowledge. I believe this video is part of an upcoming series, so he's probably planning to stretch one DVD of instruction into two or three disks.
Note also that the disk is defective. The bonus material has no sound. Casey is talking, but all you get is a hiss from the TV.
But the bonus material was skimpy as well. It's divided into sections for each drawing tool, and each bonus video is only about 30 seconds long. I doubt that the longest one is a full minute. Casey really was holding back.
Casey is very young (around 22), and very skilled. Despite the brevity, the video is absolutely worth renting.
This is a good, solid series of demonstrations of figure drawing by a real master. Don't be fooled by the photo that accompanies this video. In it, he's working from a photo, but this was a brief segment, to make a specific point. The bulk of the video is done from a live model (be aware that the model is nude, and on camera, if you have a problem with that).
Burdick completes several drawings of lengthening duration. He starts with one-minute gesture drawings and works his way up to 20-minute poses. The disc menu allows you to skip ahead or back to the poses you want to review.
He gives some good instruction, but to me the most value is in just watching him work. This is true of most art videos. Books can't teach you nearly as well as actually watching a pro as he works. This is quality stuff.
