Spring Is Slow in Arriving This Year, April 8, 2018

 Jeanne and I went walking at Charleston Falls  on April 7.  Last year we saw flowers.  This year we saw snow.

Finally on the trail that is behind the falls we found a few flowers.  They were bluebells...not very tall and just beginning to show buds.

The wildflowers are here.  Just under the snow today.  I walked on Wednesday March 28 and found the flowers below.

PurpleCress...

Leaves of Trout Lilies ( also called Adder's Tongue and Dogtooth Violet)

Waterleaf...not sure which species...

Spring Beauty

The Bluebells were showing blue buds then, too.

There was more water dropping over the falls on March 28. We had had rain the previous day...all day long...sometimes just a mist, sometimes torrential downpours.

I am still working on my Self-challenge...sketches from photos I've collected over the years.  My grandson posted 104 days in a row.  I am not doing that well.  Sometimes I work on a sketch on and off for two or three days before I am satisfied with it.  I plan to continue the self-challenge until I have done a 100 sketches.  By then I hope to be doing some of them in watercolors.

Watercolor Portrait for a Friend

I was glad my friend liked this 8 X 10 painting of her mother.  The baby is  my friend's son.

The photograph I used as a starting point was this one which is about three and one half inches across and the same vertically.

Thanks to the marvelous computer, I was able to enlarge the photo, crop it, and adjust the color.

In the first watercolor, I decided to emphasize the faces and darken the rest of the painting.  I wasn't thinking about it being hung by another painting I had done in 2009.

What my friend had in mind was something more similar to the one I painted in 2009, a painting of her husband's mother and the other son.

I started again, this time using lighter, brighter colors.

A commission is about pleasing the buyer.  I am happy the second one pleased her.

Painting a Portrait Using Ideas from Chuck Close Paintings--Part 2

The final painting

Week 4.  From this point on, we had the Chuck Close Face Book to consult.  J. W. was inspired and worked an hour and a half.  He accomplished a lot.

I had downloaded another style of Chuck Close painting because J. W. didn't like the way the bits of color on the lips looked.  In this style each square is one color.  He decided he would repaint his lips in a style which was partly this second style but was also a bit like the first style.

I often find it hard to see what I can do to improve my paintings and it helps to have someone else look at my painting.  J. W. found that the same thing was true for his painting.  After Week 3, I noticed that the shape of the right side of his face ( as you are looking at it)  was not quite like the photo he was working from.  We talked about it.

The simplest way to get that angle right seemed to be to cut out the face from the background of the photograph, lay it on top of his painting and then redraw the troublesome right side by tracing around the cut out face.  You can see the original right side edge and the newly painted one.  The result is an interesting highlight between the two edges, a highlight that is often present when we look at faces.

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He used the second Chuck Close painting for ideas for painting the hair, using three browns that he mixed.  He used the lightest of the three browns to define the chin and neck muscles.  He used ideas from both styles of Chuck Close paintings to further define the eyes.

He had fun painting in the background.  All the colors are mixtures.  I suggested that he not make the edges between the colors definite but mingle the two colors so the transition was gradual.

At this point I was mostly just watching him and telling him, "Great idea."  He knew where he wanted to go.  He was comfortable combining both Chuck Close styles.

Week 5.  This was the week he refined the nose.  I copied a variety of faces painted by noted painters.  He decided the one he wanted to use for inspiration was Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough.

Before attempting painting the nose, J. W. drew a sketch of the Blue Boy's nose.

He painted in shadows along the nose in a deeper skin tone and added white to the end of the nose.  He also added the deeper skin tone along the sides of the face, especially along the right side as you look at the painting. He used a bit of the Chuck Close technique of painting two colors in a square to paint the edge shadow between the nose and lips on the right side.

Week 6.  He decided to adjust the lines depicting the nostril holes and added more of the darker skin tone along the right side of the nose.  he also added a bit more white to the center of the nose and the center of the forehead.

He had decided a few weeks earlier that he wanted a T shirt neckline, not the jacket that he was wearing in the original photo.  He had fun filling in those final blocks.  He used Turquoise for the entire T shirt, using varying amounts of water to vary the tones of the blocks.

To see how J. W. started this project go to Painting a Portrait Using Ideas from Chuck Close--Part 1.

Back to Portrait and Figure Studio, Sept3, 2015

I haven't been to a portrait and figure studio for over a year.  It was good to get back and see artist friends.  It has been a long time since I've seen most of them.

I brought my always-packed painting backpack and a small folding camp table.  I wasn't in the mood to carry a lot of equipment.

We had about two and a half hours to sketch since the model had to leave a bit early.  I drew a pencil sketch with a number two lead pencil and laid watercolor washes on it.

 The sketch is about 8 by 10 inches.

Hayner Cultural Center has asked us to put up an exhibit in their art projects teaching room so when I returned home I looked through old sketches.  Below are the two I framed for the exhibit.

This is in a 16 X 20 frame and is painted with Atelier Interactive Acrylics.  They dry more slowly than traditional acrylics.  Another three hour sketch.

This is a small watercolor sketch, about 5 X 7, in an 8 X 10 wood frame.  I don't remember whether I painted several little paintings that day but I probably did.

Ida, Portrait Redo, Part 3

Before I repainted this portrait I looked through the head and figure drawing books in my library and decided this diagram from Drawing the Head and Figure by Jack Hamm was the simplest one for me to use. But, being me, I continued to look through the various books. After the third painting session I saw some diagrams in Burne Hogarth's Drawing the Human Head which made sense to me. First of all he divided the basic head into thirds, rather than quarters
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He also had diagrams of what happens as the head turns. I knew the photo I was working from was almost a profile but not quite. However, I wasn't sure how to adjust for the turn of the head. These diagrams were helpful.

I noted that the distance A to B is the same as the distance C to D. I had looked at these diagrams before but the meaning never really came through to me. Neither of these examples were the far turn that was in my photo but in the next set of diagrams he drew a right facing head that was close to my photo. Thanks to the button on the computer that gives me a mirror image, I turned the right facing diagrams into left facing ones.

And, yes, the Ida in the photo has her head tilted up just a bit so this diagram was helpful also. Again I reversed the image with computer magic.  Ida's head is not tilted nearly as far up as this diagram shows but it reminded me of the curved nature of the human head.

With the information from Hamm's book, I repainted from the original ...

...to this. 

After looking at the diagrams in Hogarth's book, I drew these short green lines on this image using software on our computer.

That was a help.

But I decided I needed more guide lines.

I continued painting and adjusting and finally stopped at this point.

I continue to look at the painting and I see adjustments I could make to improve it. However, I have learned about the proportions of a profile and, as a bonus, a bit about what happens when a head turns. I'll set this aside and work on something else.

Ida, Profile Portrait, Part 2

Some of you have realized that I am using acrylics for this portrait because I have been painting and then painting over what I have painted. This is easily done with oils and acrylics but not easily done with watercolors which I often work with.

This is the palette I am using.

 

I am also working without a preliminary sketch. I do this in hope that I will gradually train my eyes to see proportions without sketching.  Sometimes I see the proportions and sometimes I don't. I am having trouble seeing the proportions with this profile but I keep on practicing.

This is where I was at the end of the first session.   I had blocked in the rest of the square behind the crown of the hat with light blue to help me get the shape correct.

I adjusted the hat in front of the face.  I also raised the eye and added shape to the lips.

I added black made from Cadmium Orange and French Ultramarine Blue to more of the hat to give  shape to the face as well as the hat.  I also began adjusting the ear.
 

I added some basic shading on and around the ear. I also added a bit more definition on the rest of the face and a few shadows in the hair. The back brim is also roughed in with black.  Notice that I have not yet covered all the lines from the square I painted in the first step.

Before I began the third session, I looked through my books on drawing faces and made some discoveries which caused me work differently.  I'll tell you about them next time.

Ida, Profile,Redo, Part1

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To the left is the photo I took.  To the right is the sketch I painted. Ugh! I am tempted to make excuses but I won't. The biggest problem was that I didn't give her enough "brain". Is that because I am more interested in faces than in the backs of people's heads?

I looked through my collections of portrait drawing books and settled on using this diagram from Jack Hamm's Drawing the Head and Figure, copyright 1963, page 27. It is number 7 in a series of 9 steps. I traced over the head outline with a computer software product, the brush from Jasc. If you look closely you can see the square divided in fourths that he used as a starting point. Further along in the book is the step by step drawing of a male's head, which he draws with different proportions.

I thought that I would get enough information by simply crossing a horizontal and a vertical line. As I proceeded, I wished I had taken time to draw the entire square guide. But I didn't start over. I blundered on.

Next I sketched in the hat, hoping that would help with proportions.

As it turned out, I adjusted the hat several times before I was happy with it. Next I painted in what I saw as the shape of the face. (I saw that shape differently as I progressed further.)

I blocked in the features and left the sketch for the day.   The new sketch is better but more needs to be done.  More in Part 2 which I will put up tomorrow.