Practice

I've been frustrated by not knowing a thing about painting. Type of brush, quality, shape, size and material all make a difference. Then what do you do with each of them and really how do you do it. Then there is type of paint. I've come to find out that acrylic dries so fast that you can't blend colors or tones together to show contour, shading, or gradual change in skin tones. So, it is time to get some books from the library and do the exercises they suggest. Joseph Dawley published "Character Studies in Oil", 35 years ago. He shows wonderful character study portraits, very finely done on Masonite which appears to allow finer detail than canvas with its rough texture. Anyway, he shows how he goes about painting the parts of the face, hair, and then whole faces. The above are the first five exercises, top right is an old person's eye. He sets up 5 tones, in this case from white to pure raw umber, with 3 intermediate tones which he describes as white with 5%, 10% and 25% raw umber. I think mine were darker. Using these to lay in the various tonal and Shadow characteristics of the eye, mouth, ear etc. he then finishes up with blending to get contours and final touches of highlights and darks. He does his drawing with brushes, starting with very rough forms and refining as he goes. Of course he is using oil, and so he can wait until the last stage to blend. I found that I could get some blending here working in acrylic. If I lay the paint on thick and blend immediately. I think stiff bristle brushes are necessary for blending. There are tricks to be learned.

I also read a book by a woman child portraitist. She demonstrates portraits in charcoal, sanguine, pastel, oil and watercolor of the same child. A real tour de force. Portraits in watercolor probably require the most skill. She said that pastel is the best medium for child portraits because it is so soft. Also, she never sprays (fixative) pastel (she does charcoal ans sanguine I think) because it dulls the color. Pastel must be framed under glass right away, but if so, it keeps its color best. This is great cause I can work in pastel, and paint is tough. Still it is fascinating and hugely challenging world. And the more I explore doing art, the more I come to appreciate art work, and the artists.

Jehova creating the sun and moon

I worked long and hard on this and I think it is pretty awful. The drawing was good, I though to use colored pencils, but they didn't cover very well. The watercolor paper, is not suitable for pastel, so I painted, and lost all the detail, couldn't get the drapery, and had trouble with colors among other things.

Update: I did a little work on it. While the gown is not very good, it shows some hint of drapery and the colors are within the correct range. At least it removes the most glaring flaw. I probably should have left Jehova's hair alone, and maybe the beard too.

Mary detail from unknown artist

Once again struggling with shading of skin tone. Teacher said I should be working in oil. Apparently acrylic dries too fast to get smooth transitions in tones. I tried to paint fast with prepared variations of skin tone. Also had trouble with the hair. At this point I can do just as well with pastel and that's not good. While the original has rosy cheeks, chin, and nose, most of the rest of the face is more tan than I was able to get. Going back to fix things at this point would likely make it worse, since acrylic dries darker than when wet, so it would be very hard to mix appropriate colors.

Original Picasso "Girl with Pitcher"

Why is this so beautiful? Tonality and overall softness contribute a lot. But I was struck by the flow of curves. Note the outer line of the face curves continue on to define the eye lid and eye socket. The eyebrow continues smoothly into the nose line. The left shoulder, arm, hand line continues into the right forearm. This is some of Picasso's rhythmic flow. Even though he outlines, he keeps it soft, so that the curves, range of colors, tones, and muted outlines convey a very gentle, sweet, mood. He does this while hinting at early cubism with his treatment of the nose.

Based on Picasso's "Girl with a Pitcher"

As I've whined before, my printer only prints in monochrome, in this case it was magenta. This helps me with value (how light or dark) but not at all with color. Since I don't paint in front of the image on the computer, I have to guess. In this case I put some swatches of close pastel on a sheet of paper and winged it from there. I was amazed how close I got, with the exception of the pitcher and bowl. The more muted colors of the vase in the original add to the overall softness of it. I'll post it above.

Ramana Maharshi

The best known saint/sage of India during the twentieth century. I did a grey scale drawing of him a few days ago that you can see on my pastel site. Here I'm struggling with shades of paint, blending etc. I find brushwork less refined than pencil, shading harder, and because of the quick drying time of acrylics, color matching and blending difficult.

Original - Pieter Pauwel Rubens

My audience of one insists that I post the originals. I feel my paintings look better without the comparison. My early drawings looked good with the comparison because I got quite close with simple drawings, and I was proud of that, but painting is a whole different situation.

This is a portrait of the Duke of Lerna. It hangs in the Museo del Prado in Spain. The original is 283 cm x 200 cm which explains why Rubens has a little better command of the details than my 7 inch painting. Unfortunately, I started mine as a sketch from a monochrome copy that had been cut off at the top and bottom and so missed some of the composition. It was on only 50# paper, but I decided to paint it in rather than use pastel. This piece is magnificent. Double click to see the detail.

Ruben's Horse

I really like Rubens. Among the many drawings I looked at, his appealed to me more than any others. I felt that Durer was a better technician, but that Rubens had more artistic flair. His paintings get pretty wild. I love this portrait. Presumably the guy was military, so his portrait surrounds him with his horse and battle scene. Rubens uses this same horse in another portrait. I like the horse more than the man. But the portrait is more than the wonderful horse, there are the dark roiling clouds of war, the small cannon fodder soldiers, the dark overhanging leaves. Quite sinister, which may say a lot about the man, but the horse is a white light of innocence and magnificence in the middle. 2/18/07 actual size 7 in. x 8.5 in.

Original "Visitation" Pietro di Cosimo

This is what real art looks like. Feast your eyes.

Picasso "Sisterhood"

I called this "Sisterhood". When I began to look at depictions of "Visitation" the meeting between Elizabeth and Mary, I noticed a great similarity with Picasso's drawing. The story on the drawing is that the woman on the left is wearing a hat from a VD hospital for women in Paris (early 1900's). The woman on the right has a baby and is pregnant. Two widely separated paths through life, but they are joined by compassion. One thinks, "there but for the grace of God go I", but I don't see even this much judgement in Picasso's work, just pure understanding compassion. Indeed, from God's perspective it is just, "there go I". Which applies to both. I did this drawing 9/3/06.

Visitation based on Pietro di Cosimo

My project for todays painting class. I chose visitation because it reminds me of the Picaso drawing I called sisterhood. I think Picaso had "Visitation" in mind when he did that drawing of a pregnant women carrying a baby and a prostitute. The pose is quite similar, you can see my copy on my drawing web site, linked above. 2/014/07

Jehova creating Adam

Well this is my first acrylic painting. Fitting that it should return to the subject of my first drawing. Drawing and pastel seem much easier and more exact. Shading with paint seems much more difficult, and getting the drapery look always difficult, much more so with paint. On the other hand color saturation is stronger, lines are in the natural colors instead of pencil lines. This will take some getting used to. 2/13/07

First Still Life

My first painting. 2/07/07. Here I'm using tube watercolor as opaque paint. I like the total coverage, the black background, and the ability to put any color esp. white over the black. You can double click on the picture to get a large version.