Danni upped the anty with her next assignment: paint striped fabric so that the stripes drape properly with the twists and folds of the material, with shadows etc.
I didn’t want to be boring with two simple pieces of material. So I composed a still life with a red and white striped towel, topped by a bottle of red wine, standing next to a bottle of sparkling water, atop a green and white striped towel. I thought of it as a ‘Face Off’.
If you’re going to paint a portrait, you need to know how to paint clothes and drapes.
Hence the homework assignment to paint two pieces of fabric so that a viewer would know that they differ in weight and texture. I didn’t have to look far for subjects: a blue denim apron friends had brought back from Sennelier in Paris and a red satin shopping bag made by a daughter-in-law. I draped them over a corner of my easel and set to work. Voila.
I’m WAY behind in reporting on my art activities. I am hoping to give some brief updates to get back on track.
After seeing Danni Dawson’s work at the Art League’s conference mentioned in the last post, I enrolled to study portraiture with her over in Alexandria, VA.
Our first model was a lovely young woman draped in a Spanish lace mantilla. I made a series of studies of her — and they went downhill from the first one! See for yourself:
The model:
My studies:
First Attempt
Second try
Third – Aargh!
Fourth Try
For someone interested in learning more about figurative & portrait painting, there are few places better than the Art League of Alexandria, aka the Torpedo Factory Art Center. My art buddy Helen Gallagher and I enjoyed hanging out at its first conference, celebrating a milestone anniversary. Here are a few of the pieces we saw demonstrated at the event.
Shortly after dear Alison Neustrom passed away, my sister Cecilia and I flew to Maine for a mixed media workshop, turning to art to help manage grief. We wanted to try our hands at combining oil paint with patterned papers to produce unique images, with artist Katie Wilson. Ceci’s first effort was a portrait of granddaughter Evie; I worked on a biking scene of grandson Max steering dad Sam.
Ceci’s Evie
Max Steers Sam on a Sunday Ride
When last I posted in Oct 2014, I was closing in on the finale of my portrait of neighbor Rita – debating whether to make a few more tweaks despite her preference that I ‘stop right there’. I couldn’t resist, though. Here’s how she looks now, but don’t tell her that I’m tempted to start re-tweaking eight months later. Need to shorten her chin & widen her lower jaw line just a smidge.
I had made good progress during my work based on the reference photograph, but I decided it wasn’t good enough. As a way to visualize changes that might improve the painting, I decided to do a mark-up on the iPad, using a side-by-side comparison with the reference photo.
markup of painted portrait, as a result of side-by-side comparison with photo. iPad screenshot.
I cropped the photo included in my September 8th post and imported it digitally into the ArtRage app on my iPad. I then ‘painted’ over the portrait area, trying to remedy the problems I identified in the painting. This was a freehand process, done by ‘eyeballing’ the photo reference. ArtRage is not able to make measurements for a closer comparison of the two images.
I like this markup as well as the final painting — if not more! The ability to easily edit iPad marks liberates me from feeling that each (potentially incorrect) modification is ‘permanent’. Playing around with the marks often yields spontaneous and interesting ideas that I would never have attempted initially in oils.
Even though I liked the resulting mark-up, I knew it would still be a challenge to implement these ideas in oil paint on the actual painting.
A few days after my third meeting with Rita, I decided to spend some time at home, making corrections based on the photo I’d taken at the prior session. Then I blew up a print of the photo, marked up the dimensions of key facial features and then taped it beside my updated portrait for a closer comparison.
A quick look confirms that the portrait is better than it had been, but . . . the chin is too long. The lower cheeks and forehead are too narrow. The nose isn’t quite right and the eye on our left droops too much. The hair is too high (but I love it so! Will I bite the bullet and whittle it down?)
session five, after implementing changes identified via my iPad analysis
I show it to Rita who likes it ‘as is’ and doesn’t want me to make more changes. Hmmmm. What to do?
The next time Rita and I got together, I focused primarily on developing her eyes and trying to capture the slight grin we’d arrived at for the facial expression. Didn’t want to touch the hair or general coloration, which I liked.
Rita at session 3.
At the end of the session, I made a photo or two of Rita in this position and with ‘the grin’. You can see immediately that I’ve got a ways to go!
Rita, in the selected pose.
At our next session, I posed Rita looking straight ahead. I thought that would be contemporary, as well as more fun for both of us. We could see each other, converse more easily, and I could watch her sparkling eyes as I painted. I thought it also might help her hold a little grin ~~ I knew I’d be grinning at her the whole time and grins are infectious.
Rita, first session in oils on linen.
Here’s how the painting looked at the end of the first session with oils. My main goals were to situate her on the canvas, get an approximation of her bright shirt, rough out the face contours, and depict her silver hair in luscious pale colors.