Portraits in Oils - Week 2 - Thursday

First and Second painting stages 

Regular start to the day, set up my area for working. Oil in on both pieces to bring up the darks. The morning chat was extended over some coffee and donuts the nice ladies brought in, I know I'll regret it later though. My medium for the day is 1: 1 (1 Damar to 1 oil) + a little cobalt drier to speed things up.

The most important thing I've found out is to put the time in to properly lay out my palette. Today I further refined it and it is really helping the work progress.

Struggling with this female portrait, I decide to refine the shadows in order to help me really "see" the values. On some parts I mixed Persian/Indian red straight in from the tube and blended it on the canvas. I am surprised how much chroma is needed, further emphasizing the importance of as high quality materials as you can afford.

My work is angular and harsh. Above is Marthino's as an example of what this stage should look like. The lighting is very different, but he is highly adept and subtle value and tonal ranges, it is very impressive to me, and if you look closely at his work is is still very loose and painterly up close.

 I had to step back and re-examine my value range. It is really starting to click. I began describing the planes, and in some areas they are still very angular but as I begin to blend the edges they will be more convincing. Here I mainly worked in bringing up some of the lights in the shadow area and adding more highlights.

 The importance of a proper first painting and falling light/ flesh ball are very apparent, if they are not right it is difficult to hold the entire picture together realistically. Now I can tell why so many works I've seen (not by any accomplished artists, of course) look so flat and lifeless, they do not have proper control over sculpting the planes of the face on top of properly under painted value ranges.

Here is my happy little work area, my tabaret full of materials.  My piece has second painting done with a more full color range. The girls portrait is beginning to come together a bit better.

 After class, I am going to Marthino's talk about A renewal of Sacred Art at St. Mary's University.

Portraits in Oils - Week 2 - Wednesday

big form modelling...

I began by oiling in. The first color I started with the basic flesh color. The basic idea is to make the head into a flesh ball of sorts.  By examining the planes of the head and where the light is hitting it makes it easier to get the basic turning of the simple form.

The medium I used was a 3:1. That is 3 parts solvent/Damar varnish mix to 1 part linseed oil. A good place to start is with a bit of red umber mixed with white and starting near the bed bug line. Commit this to memory: "the darkest light should be lighter than the lightest dark". Already the image has moved away from flat Warhol like image to a rounded naturalistic form.

 I jumped back and forth between canvases once the paint got overworked and tacky due to the rapid drying provided by the addition of a few drops of cobalt drier. Here you can see the modelling of the form of the girls face, done in much the same way. It is becoming apparent how important the early stages, though seemingly simple, make up the map you will need later on to take the picture work.

One method I'm working with is learning how to properly use a well laid out palette. Here is my first try. Its simple but it seems to work. I've strung out the main colors of the flesh palette we are using. It helps to understand the changes in value and tonality and how to use it systematically to the best effect.

Another pointer, and I'm picking up a lot of good working skills, is to have two containers of turpentine, one for the first clean of the brushes and my smaller one for the cleaned brushes used for thinning, that way I wont get muddied colors while working. Also use more paint and have more chroma, in order to guard against inadvertent greying of my tones.

The next step after the big form modelling is to work on the planes of the face.  This is where small color shifts based on the values are added in. We had a reference picture to simplify the planes of the face, very useful. I also had to go back into my shadows and darken them to get more depth in my image.  I worked on creating more form and tonality in the shirt. You can see how having the initial big form modelling is a real asset/

I went back and forth into the two portraits. Here I built more into the female face but was really struggling to maintain her beauty, while my work was still to flat and the creases and planes too well defined to be believable.

I ended off on a positive note with my self portrait. Got some color in the lips. Nice form on the forehead and some definition in the shadow areas and some depth developing in the clothing and background. Looking forward to the Animation Lock down tonight and hump day coming to a close so I can get a little rest and really make a charge on the last two days of the workshop.

Portraits in Oils - Week 2 - Tuesday

Self - portrait

Our workshop Martinho Corriea gave a demo on creating a portrait. He is so skilled in his craft, he makes it look easy.

I didn't have a color copy so I printed out a black and white reference on my home computer. I traced out my image onto tracing paper by taping it up on the big windows at the Calgary School of Art.

 I rubbed down the back of the tracing paper with vine charcoal, lined it up the way I liked the composition to appear on the canvas and traced back over top of my line to press the charcoal thru the paper and onto the ground.

The canvas that was prepared last week with Lead white and textured with a super sponge was wet sanded and given a rub of burnt umber before beginning. I then inked in traced sketch with thinned down umber.

I dead coloured my shadows first, the half tone for the skin and threw down come color for the shirt area.

 I added a background made up of yellow ochre, black and white and let it dry overnight while going back and forth between the other portrait of the girl I started (yesterday's post entry).

Portraits in Oils - Week 2 - Monday

Today we began work on a self-portrait based on the photo take by the instructor last week.

I decided to work on two canvas simultaneously. First because I had a prepped panel and a close up of the model from last week and It was holiday Monday and I didn't have a color print out of my portrait yet. I didn't have a chance to get one done since I was in Animation Lockdown all Long week-end. So this bit is a reminder of the steps before we get into the nitty gritty of my self portrait in oil.

Back to stage 1 of creating the piece = drawing. Due to time constraints I traced out the face, from a photograph, on tracing paper and created a line drawing with the bed bug line (the line where the shadow meets the light).

The back of the tracing paper was rubbed down with vine charcoal. I then place it on top of the prepared ground (in this case canvas board rubbed down with a neutral color). Then the tracing paper was lined up over the canvas board until I had an adequate composition. I taped it down and retraced the line, imprinting charcoal onto the ground.

I use raw umber thinned with mineral spirits to draw in the lines. This is to set down the composition and is referred to as the "cartoon". The lines emphasize the high and low points. Rather than use curvilinear lines that drift into inaccuracy, these are made up of small straight ones.

The next step is to block in the shadows. I use burnt umber and white and begin the dead coloring starting with the shadow.

The next step is dead coloring the mid-tones in the lit side. This color was made of the base flesh tone ( red + yellow ochre + white) plus some red umber if needed for your model.  I loosely filled in the mid-tones of the background with a mix of black, yellow ochre and a touch of flake (lead) white. The background could be done thicker but scrubbing it in quickly is fine since I will be going over it again.

I began filling in the fall of light doing the big for modelling. You can see the highlight on the left side near the eye and it drops off. The focus here is getting the basic fall like on the flesh ball example.

 

Here is is more softly blended with the additional tones added to create more form in the hair. As well you can notice the repainted flat background. After this dries I will have a chance to continue on with the first painting stage.

Painting Portraits in Oils workshop - Day 4 & 5

Second stage painting

We started by oiling in the previous days work to bring the tones back up. Martinho gave a demo on second stage painting where you use the values mapped out previous and model the form more and bring out some of the varied colours in each area. We also looked at the work of other portrait painters to compare their handling of the subject and paint such as Raeburn and Sargent.

I turned the painting upside down, which is a little optical trick to help me see the variation in the values and negatives shapes easier.The focus was to refine the work a little more and get to second stage painting in just one area. At lunch I took advantage of the last day of the half off sale at Cactus Art and got a bunch of new brushes, how could I resist, they were only 50 cents each,and some had sticker prices of over $10.

As you can see, I got a handful and it was all under $20. They also gave me this brush tote for free to carry them in.

I decided to begin whit the seemingly easiest portion of the body for second stage development the legs. I was having a frustrating time and spent nearly the entire day working them to create that feeling of dimension while maintaining the true fall of light. At time it was a frustrating challenge.

It was necessary for me to bump up the chroma. They appeared dulled down and grey. I added more Persian red. Doing this made it much easier to closely resemble the original hues and create more form.

 I sat here and worked for at least 8 hours. The tabaret to my left has been emptied of supplies in this shot, but I tell you this little rolling shelf is such a valuable device. To break the monotonoy of just working on the legs, I danced around a bit in other areas, including the shadows.

By the end of the day I was overjoyed with my progress. Surprised at how much I could accomplish and how well it turned out. That's one of the secrets of making art, of not wrecking what you have done or going to far. You have got to know when to quit.......... quit while you are ahead!

That led me into a fun but busy week-end at Quickdraw Animation Society's Retro Lock down.

Painting Portraits in Oils workshop - Day 3

First painting

We began the day with a demo by Martinho Corriea on the subject of first painting. The first step is oiling in the painting from the previous session. This is done with a 50/50 mixture or turpentine and linseed oil. This stage is where largest forms are modeled in the round. For example treat the leg as a column, but also pay attention to the fact that there is still the fall of light from the previous session. The torso becomes a rounded mass and you still work with simple light to dark and a large brush.

At this stage there is no work into the dark areas. "Keep the darks thin and the lights thick". The objective of First Painting is to model the larger forms by trying to keep to the proper value shifts. This is why the fall of light is there, like a map you paint over but it helps you keep the values intact. It takes a lot of concentration and a few tricks with perception to get this right.

My rag is under the canvas to give me a surface to wipe my brush clean. As you can see the form of the legs is rounder and there is a barrel shape to the chest. The bed bug line is still there and I had to go in and darken some of my shadow work. The largest forms are beginning to be described.

Martinho continues to work on his piece.
I took a lesson and stuck my reference much closer to my canvas.

 I worked on the background gradation a bit more. I punched up the shadows a bit. I also put in a few lighter tones into the navel regions shadows. My paint was looking scraggly and Martinho's advice was MORE PAINT!  I have always been so conservative with my use of paint, but as he says paint is cheap (at least some colors are). At any rate he is absolutely right! I'm so used to not using much because it dries up in between sessions, and by being cheap, I've been rubbing out rather than applying thick, a habit that needs changing if I want rich looking canvases.

 I was very frustrated learning to work in a new way and not being as proficient as my mind thought I should be. By the end of the session I wanted to be done more. I have a new found respect for the subtlety of light and shadow and peoples ability to render great realistic looking tones in oil paint. I'm happy I got out of there in one piece! I took out my frustration in Martial arts class afterward.

Painting portraits in oils workshop - Day 2

The Fall of Light

Here is my cart set up in the morning. Just seeing this excites me, as it should any artist. 
From Left to right top to bottom:
I have my photocopy reference for creating the initial drawing, my paper towel, my thermos of organo gold mocha and a treat on top, some fruit 9which should definitely not be near my work ara), my solvent and brush cleaning container, my loaded palette and medium cups and towel clipped to my wooden palette, a selection of brushes, below are my thinners, turpenoid, linseed oil, Damar varninsh, odorless spirits, and paints and other materials.

We started the workshop with a morning demo explaining how to do the fall of light. It is one thing to conceptualize it and another to see a master effortlessly do it right in front of your eyes. The main idea being to now treat the figure as if it were a cardboard cut out and paint the lights from the top of the head cascading down the body as the light source becomes further away from the subject. Basically her chest becomes a flat highlight tone and gradually transitions down to her feet. Since the model was standing for a long time in the photo there is the addition of red from the blood flow to her legs.

A gentle gradation is added to the background and well as on the floor, lighter in the front and gradually getting darker as it recedes into the distance. I kept my flesh ball above to remind me of my 5 bases to work from on the palette and adjusted with pigments as necessary. I was really frustrated from the start, when I oiled in I noticed the paint was still to tacky to work, it didn't help with pushing the paint around and began to get a bit muddy. With oils you need to work with their drying time. Even though I added a few drops of cobalt drier to my medium the day before the paint was still wet.

In the afternoon we did a workshop on photographing and lighting for portraits. I have tons of experience here so nothing was new to me. In fact, I lent a helping hand to get the photos to work with the limited resources we had to work with. This is the one I chose, from three photos taken, to work from, it is a pure photo no photoshop editing has been done to it. Why bother, I can correct it in paint.

After lunch we got dangerous. well, poisonous on top of the carcinogen that cobalt drieyand half the pigments in oil contain. Darryl, the student who is stationed beside me, donated some Flake (LEAD) white for us to prep our canvases for the portrait. See the big red skull, would you want to use this stuff?

The first step is to prepare the flake white paint. It is really thick so you need to thin it down with some spirits or turpentine, preferably being as safe as possible by wearing gloves.

Brush on a layer of the stick white paint to cover evenly.

Use a big car (super) sponge to pat down the surface. It will make for a real velvety texture when dried like the old masters used to use. So now I wait until it dries and I can use it for my self portrait.

 Here is a shot of some of the work in class. I decided not to paint a solid background and keep some of my painterly strokes for effect and beauty.

This is as far as I got with all the variety of things we did in the time we had. You can see some of the shine and different drying times in the paint by looking in the shadow area. My paint was really sticky and hard to deal with. I definitely don't want to battle with it again tomorrow. I had to help speed up the drying process by leaving it in the warm cab of my truck until tomorrow's session.