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| Portrait of Randy Orwig by Anthony Ryder |
THE MODEL
Our model for the Tony Ryder workshop was Randy Orwig, a favorite subject of Tony, and of fellow-painter Daniel Greene. For artists who only work from life, Orwig is the perfect model; once set, he never moves and rarely blinks, and after breaks (when he breaks), he returns to his exact position without need of correction. It is not surprising that, in addition to modeling for artists across the country, Orwig can also be found working as a "Living Statue."
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| Randy Orwig, The Living Statue. Photography by Gaby. |
THE PALETTE
Ryder works on a 12" X 16" palette made of 1/4" (6mm) thick Corian®, a pore-less, solid-surface material manufactured by DuPont®. Preferring not to mix his colors against a white background, Ryder chose the color Dusk from the Corian® line, which, he admits, is not as ideal as would be a non-patterned surface, but its overall tone suits his needs. The board is nearly as easy to clean as glass, but is much less fragile, and since its tone is impregnated, he does not need to take additional steps to make the mixing area a suitable value. Ryder's particular palette was purchased from Eráz, a Californian company specializing in Corian® cutting boards.
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| Corian® Dusk |
Ryder sometimes preserves his palette overnight in a Masterson Palette Seal Box which he places in his freezer. For this reason, the dimensions of 12" X 16" are important; nothing larger will fit in that container.
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| Masterson Palette Seal Box |
Though Ryder will save his palette over several painting sessions, it is always important that he keeps his colors maintained. The paints should be fresh and clean; dry paints should be scraped off, and fresh paint should be put in their footprints. If a paint has formed a skin, it can be flipped and still used, providing it still exhibits good flow. Whether Ryder is using his currently recommended 27 colors, or an even further extended palette, he lays out his pigments in the same pattern.
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| 1- Whites, 2- Yellows, 3- Orange, 4- Reds, 5-Blue-Reds, 6- Red-Blues, 7- Blues, 8-Greens, 9- Earth Yellows, Reds, and Browns, 10- Black |
The palette is held in a vertical position on Ryder's easel using a stand built by a former student. Unfortunately, these vertical palette supports are no longer available for sale.
MAHL STICK
For this workshop, Ryder used a mahl stick made of three pieces of aluminum tent pole held together with an elastic shock cord. He supported it with a C-clamp fastened to the easel, and when not in use, he stored it in the mahl stick stand made from pipe sections described in an earlier post.
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| Tony's tent-pole mahl stick is leaning against his shoulder. The C-clamp support can be seen peeking out from behind the canvas |
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| Mahl stick stand. |
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| Portrait of Randy Orwig by Anthony Ryder |
4 comments:
Loving this series, most helpful.
Very nice! Thank you for sharing.
You've changed my life! Or at least my palette. I've been using an 18x24" piece of frosted glass for a few years and it was ok.
But we've had this somewhat bigger piece of Swanstone countertop kicking around for ages. Swanstone is a solid surface product that is essentially the same as Corian.
Our chunk also has the darker bits in it, but is a fairly neutral beige otherwise.
So we dug it out and I put in on my painting table to give it a try. I love it!!!
It's great to mix paint on and cleans up very easily. The razor blade doesn't snag on it. I was concerned about the visual distraction of the darker bits, but so far it's not a problem and I see that in the Corian palette they are much more prominent.
Thank you so much! I'm going to be passing on this idea for a palette.
Regarding Ryder's Corian Palette: As you know it is expensive material, but if you call your local Kitchen Counter companies, (most towns usually have many), they may have scrap pieces in their shop. I did this today and though it took four different calls, I located a 20" x 20" piece of non-white Corian scrap in great shape. Cost? I lucked out, they didn't charge and were happy there was a use for it. Thought this might be helpful to pass around.
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