A Child's Portrait

Ricker - oil on linen - 14 x 16"

This is the first oil portrait I've done in years! I could not believe how difficult it was, and how long it took. I really was out of practice. I worked from photos that I took myself. It is difficult to get a child this young to hold still for a photograph, let alone a painting. Here he was talking to me, and see how happy and animated he is!

It was worth the effort. I am happy with the end result! And the boy's grandparents love it! That's what's important!

Eye Highlights

Eye with highlight

Eye without highlight

Other eye with highlight

Here's what I'm working on right now. Almost done! I just put the highlights in the eyes. I love flake white for portraits: it is translucent, just like skin. But for the highlights, I used titanium white. I wanted a white that would be opaque, and stay that way.

I like it when portraits seem to come alive! Then, I can talk to them!

The Girl with the Pearl Earring - De Young Museum

The Girl with the Pearl Earring has come to San Francisco, and I got to see her at the De Young Museum! Going to museums and seeing works by great artists always has a renewing effect on me!

According to the signs on the wall, this painting is not a portrait of an actual person, but instead is a tronie. In other words, the artist was trying to capture a facial expression or historic character, but not the likeness of an actual person. (Wow, how disappointing for those of us who saw the movie, Girl with a Pearl Earring, starring Scarlett Johansson!)

Works by other Dutch artists of the same time period were also part of the exhibit. One thing that immediately stood out was the simplicity of this work. Many of the works by other artists were so highly detailed, it looked like the artists used a 3-hair brush, and maybe a magnifying glass. That was the predominant style of the day. While The Girl with the Pearl Earring was painted very simply, with wide brushes, few strokes and minimal detail. The pearl itself was painted with three brush strokes! The earring probably was not a real pearl, but a glass bead painted to look like a pearl.  

The Girl is the only painting by Vermeer in the show. She looks like she has just turned her head and is about to speak to us. There is a feeling of life and movement in the painting, and her gaze seems directed toward something to the right of us, which makes it even more mysterious.

The painting itself appeared much lighter than the picture above, and the skin tones looked somewhat chalky. The lights and shadows were both painted with cool colors. This gave the painting a modernist look. I wondered if the recent cleaning and removal of yellowed varnish might have changed it. But, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to see it!

Decisions, Decisions...

"When you get scared, go for the clothes!" -- Joy Thomas

I have been working on a portrait, the first oil portrait I've done in years. Wow, it is so easy to get rusty, and forget things; like which colors to mix so the skin won't look chalky. So... taking a break from the struggle to get the skin tones right, I went for the shirt. Here's where it is so far. I looked at it and realized this is the kind of unfinished look many contemporary artists use in their portraits. Here's an example. Should I leave the shirt loose and unfinished looking? Another decision!

By the way, you may have noticed that I haven't posted in awhile. Well, Blogger would not take my photo uploads. Today, I told myself I would do a blog no matter what! I cleared the cache, the cookies, disabled the popup blocker, and a bunch of plug-ins, all to no avail... Finally, I downloaded the Chrome browser, and it worked! (I had been using Firefox.) It feels so good to be back online again!

Hope you had a good weekend!

Portraits and Loss

Andrew Wyeth's father, N. C. Wyeth, died in an accident, when Andrew was a young man. I was really moved, listening to this interview, that he regretted having never gotten around to painting a portrait of his dad before he died. "I made drawings of him, but nothing important, and I think that was a great tragedy of my life when he was killed, that I hadn't done it."

Portrait of the Artist's Mother - gouache - 7 x 9"

It made me wonder, too, how when my mother was dying, I felt like I HAD TO do her portrait. Maybe it was my way of processing the grief... Maybe it was because I was thinking about her so much...
She would have moments when she seemed to be aware, and other moments, gone.

Portrait of the Artist's Mother #2 - watercolor pencils - 10 x 10"

Here's to you, Mom! I love you!

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Ava

...Ava...

charcoal on paper - 18 x 13"

This portrait was commissioned by the parents, but the dad told the mom that I didn't have time to finish it before Christmas, so he could surprise her with it as a Christmas gift! Ava is about a year old in this drawing. I made it rather detailed in the face, but kept the rest of the drawing loose and sketchy. In fact, I sprinkled the paper with charcoal powder and sprayed it with acetone to add texture. I really like the effect, and hope to do more with charcoal in the coming year!

Meanwhile, Oscar is delighted that this year he went from Santa's naughty list, to the nice list! (You don't want to know how he got on the naughty list!) I hope he has had a successful rehab... At least, Santa brought lots of catnip!

May you have a wonderful year!

Child Portrait, step-by step, in charcoal #2

I'm sorry this is not a good quality image, it was still on the easel. You can see I've refined and softened the skin. Still working with vine charcoal here. By the way, the finger cots are not used now because once you get a lot of charcoal on the page, they tend to pick it up, so I have switched to a maul stick.

Ordinarily, I don't like portraits of small children with open mouth smiles, because young children have gaps between their teeth that create a snaggle-toothed look. But this little boy has nice close teeth. This is not really a finished portrait, but a study for a larger oil I will be doing next.

Child Portrait, step-by step, in charcoal

I like to begin portraits with a charcoal study. Actually I was this far along before thinking my blog readers might be interested, so I'm sorry I didn't take some pictures earlier. You can see the grid lines I used for placement, and you can see I massed in the shadows using soft vine charcoal. I sort of work back and forth with the charcoal and an eraser, putting in darks and taking them out, till it gets to where I want it.

 

Here is the set-up in my studio. There is the image on the computer screen. I like working from the computer because it is so easy to enlarge the image. Any artist who has tried to work from a photograph, even 8" x 10" size, knows what I'm talking about. As you can see, I made it easier on myself here by converting the photograph to black and white.

 

For you trivia buffs, I know this looks like a condom... It is a finger cot. I like to use my pinky finger to steady my hand, and this keeps skin oils off the paper.