Hey Morgan, this was fun. I tried following along with you as you painted: when you massed in the cheek, I massed in the cheek, when you massed in the hair, I massed in the hair, etc. I was surprised to see how much you "left out" when massing. Much different than the ateliers I studied at where we used tiny brushes and rendered from shadow to light in one big smoothed out gradation, trying to capture as much surface detail as possible as we went. I don't have any flat brushes (other than bristles, which I didn't use). It was all filberts and the smaller ones were rounds. I think I could use some flats. Part of me likes it, part of me hates it. Not sure. When I try painting more loosely like this, I end up confused and thinking it doesn't look "impressionistic realism" I love, but think it looks more like someone who is trying to paint realism but can't figure out how to render. I don't know.

This is a great video, Morgan. You point out that it's best to usually have a single light source and have strong light and shade, we don't want references with all sorts of bounce lights/reflectors messing up the shadow pattern. I was thinking that you certainly have paintings with very little shadow, where the image is basically flat shapes of color with a bunch of ambient light, without strong light and shadow patterns. The first ones that came to mind from your book were "Blossoms" (pg 144), "A Helping Hand" (pg 151), and "The Woodlands" (pg 170). Turns out, I was wrong! Even those paintings still have good light and shadow: in "A Helping Hand" we see a head turned down to the ground that left part of the face in shadow, and another head turned up and shadow under the chin and ear, and even the landscape itself has areas dropped into shadow, even though IMO the landscape looks like it's a little foggy and there's probably a lot of ambient light filling in shadows. Maybe I'm wrong, but those lighter shadows on the trees in the middle ground, and the very soft/lost edges on the hill in the distance indicate a somewhat foggy day to me. So even though the light looks softer, foggy, and more diffused with more ambient light, there's still a clear shadow pattern. And it still all reads correctly. So, big lesson here: spend more time getting good reference with a strong light and shadow pattern. It doesn't have to be super contrasted like a baroque painting, but it shouldn't be all washed out with flat shapes all over the place or confusing lighting from some types of photography.

This is a fantastic explanation, thank you. I studied with Ted Seth Jacobs, who was a student of both Reilly and Frank Vincent Dumond. Ted tried his best to be 100% optical and draw without any preconceptions at all. But he talked A LOT about visual rhythms-- which in the class were based upon what he was seeing, not based upon a preconceived diagram that he was superimposing onto what he was seeing-- so it was so cool to hear you talk about connecting things through rhythms. This took me back to France again. haha. One big difference between you two, though, is that you work from the inside out, while Ted worked from the outside in. Maybe that was the Dumond influence? But he taught us to start with the large abstract shape, based totally upon what we were seeing (no ovals, measuring head lengths, etc; just abstract shapes based upon what we saw), and then break it down into smaller and smaller shapes. We didn't start working from small shape to small shape. Your method reminds me of how David Kassan draws, actually. I'm sure they're both totally valid ways to draw. Yours totally makes sense as well, so I'm definitely going to give it a shot. The only "issue" I see with measuring small shapes all the way across a painting is that I can't imagine how you get a larger painting in good proportion. i.e. by the time you get to the second foot of the third figure, or get to the background elements, etc, I imagine things can start being far off? Unless you start measuring head lengths once you are very comfortable with the head size, or you go the Mancini route and use a grid on the more complex paintings to get everything roughly in the right spot? Anyways, great demo so far. Love it