Hunter Mack

"Fortunately Positioned"
18 inches by 24 inches
Charcoal and Gouache

"This is a fairly typical piece of mine, but one of my personal favorites. Typically, I like pieces that look totally worked; I'm talking about sweat and guts remade into a painting or drawing. So, I like Jim Dine, obviously. Another glaring influence is Schiele, so I'll lay that down pretty quick.

Most of the time I have a shape in my mind when I begin a drawing. It's usually a pretty androgynous shape, but I know the positioning and the intersections. For this one I drew it out on watercolor paper using different charcoals, avoiding any erasure marks since that doesn't work too well on this paper. When the right shape takes place, I then laid down 10 or 12 extremely watered down gouache colors until it felt right. (Then a layer of fixative so it doesn't get all messed up).

The two main elements that I focus on are color and shape. It's how these two play out in the viewer's head that interest me the most. So, there's never a particular subject or person, just a feeling that I try and get across to whoever looks at the piece. Picking out elbows or armpits isn't really a concern.

In the end, using charcoal and gouache allows every mark to come out in the finished drawing so it's kind of a fully comprehensive document outlining the progression of it from start to finish, and that's an important story in and of itself."

By Hunter Mack
http://www.artamiss.org/artist_detail.php?artist_id=82