Kim
 

Hello all,

This painting of Kim is my first serious effort at portrait painting. I'd painted "portraits" before as exercises, but not with the amount of planning and effort that went into this one. It is 13" x 10", oil on maple panel. I spent two months doing very quick sketches from life, a dozen or so memory drawings, two watercolors, and some photo studies before I started the actual oil painting. In the actual painting phase I had discovered Jonathan Janson's "How to paint your own Vermeer" website and followed his technique.

http://howtopaintavermeer.fws1.com/

He was very helpful to me with advice and encouragement and critical comments when the raw umber underpainting was done. Of course the only thing Vermeerish about it is the directional light and the interior setting. The colors in the jpeg are not too bad, except that her skin tone here is discernably more reddish than the actual painting, at least before posting. I've got a later painting of Kim that I'll post for critique eventually.

Since I'm so new at this I'd like to post my entire "portfolio" in chronological order to get some sense of whether I might be drifting off in a bad direction. Well, I've already gotten out of order with the self-portrait that was my first post, but the fourth portrait that I've done (of five total since January). I'll try to do this at appropriate intervals. If it gets to be too much someone say something and I'll back off. I'm fairly thick-skinned, so don't be afraid to let me have it.

Re: Kim
 

Hello,

I like your painting. It was well thought out, I can tell and I love the background.

However, if I may, the one thing that was bothering me was the right eye (her left eye).

I might be wrong and your reference actually shows it this way. But, if not, then I recommend ligtening it up a bit, as it seems off to me.

Other than that I am loving it.

Mark

Hi Mark,

Yes, her left eye is off by a country mile and it's because the jpeg is displaying differently than it did before I posted it. The whole area around the lighted side of her face is washed out in terms of both color and contrast. In particular, the white of that eye is too high in value and the shadow under the eyelid is vague. There is a faint dark margin to the iris in the painting that is entirely missing in the view on my monitor. The net effect is to make that eye appear to be looking too far to her right. I'll try to correct it, or post a detail. There is no unitary reference for this painting, so you'll have to take my word for it for now that the likeness is good.

Whew, I'm glad to hear that you like the background, because I've had reason to worry that I may be in trouble on my backgrounds. Thanks for the input. I've been meaning to offer comments on your painting and others as well, but my typing is deadly slow and I'm having a hard time keeping up.

Hello John!

Don't worry, this background is great! I love the texture on the wall. The door handle looks very real. And, the face looks very good.

Just a little suggestion... I think your model would probably look better situated a bit higher towards the top of the canvas. In both Margaret Carter Baumgaertner and Tom Browning's workshops the models are usually 2-3 inches from the top. I have tried lower and higher and tend to agree with them. I hope you don't mind but I cropped your painting to show you what I mean.

Also, It might be the digital image but her hair color seems very close to the skin color creating that surrealistic effect again! :)

Hi Denise,

I've been stuck in a little corner of limbo (or is it the other place?) all week, due to my part-time day job turning into full-time temporarily. Thanks for doing the digital crop. I've been given the same advice about the relation of the top of the head to the top of the canvas by others. I guess it's one of those dogmas that everyone adheres to in the portrait trade. I can't say that it matters to me one way or the other, although this may change with experience.

I'm intrigued by the surrealism reference. In this post the flesh tones do appear more red than in the actual painting, and consequently are similar to the shadows in the hair. In the self-portrait there was a definite reddish quality to the flesh tones, but I saw that as absolutely required by the sunset background. When I think of surrealism I think of limp watches, biomorphs in landscapes, and other distortions of forms, etc. I'm not sure what you mean, unless there is some relationship between surrealism and monochromaticity or homogeneity of color. Or is it that the color seems unnatural, hence surreal? I'm going to post a better version of Kim to try to get the jpeg closer to the real thing. It might take me a few days.

Hi John,

Just a quick note on flesh/hair tones. I don

Hello John,

Please forgive me if I used the wrong word.

Please don't forget that I am French Canadian and I usually do everything in French so I am probably not using the appropriate word. What I meant was that something doesn't look real, like it couldn't really be that way in life. I definitely wasn't thinking Salvator Dali. I will be more careful with my choice of words in the future. :)

Mark, Denise and Mari,

Thanks very much for taking the time to comment on this painting. It's been really illuminating in several ways. I saw immediately that the jpeg as posted was off in color. It does read as almost a sepia-toned flesh/hair combination in the post, but the painting is not nearly this uniform. I've spent almost enough time trying to digitally correct it as I would need to paint another one, and I'm still unable to get it to look like the original. I've looked at it on four different computer/monitor combinations and each one has its idiosyncracies.

For the record, the fleshtones were painted using raw umber, titanium white, raw sienna, yellow ochre, cad. red medium, ivory black and terre verte. The hair was done using burnt umber, indian yellow, alizarin crimson, titanium white and ivory black. In the actual painting the skin has a distinctly more olive cast than the hair. Kim is Asian, and her skin has a different color than the typical Caucasian skin.

The jpeg in the post was shot using my son's Sony digital camera, downloaded in jpeg format to a Toshiba laptop, loaded to a floppy disc, transferred to an older Mac clone, resized to conform to the forum requirements, and finally attached to the post. Somewhere along the line it got more red everywhere, and there seems to be nothing I can do about it. But I can have Kim stand next to the actual painting, and everyone agrees that the skin color is a pretty good match, and so is the hair (although it is dyed and tipped, not her natural color).

I think what I'm getting at here is that there are limits to the amount of help that can be offered through cyberspace. For anything other than the more obvious aspects it requires that we have an accurate reproduction of the original. When I go to apply the suggestions to the painting itself I have my doubts. I would guess that the fix would be to have more complementary colors in the shadows and in the mid tones of the more lighted areas. I've tried this digitally to some extent, but the effect has not been encouraging, and I'm not excited about repeating the experiment with paint. I think the best I can do at this point is to bear the advice in mind for future paintings.

I'll post a detail and some of the reference material in the hope that it may clarify the earlier discussion about Mark's points and some of my comments above.

Here is the eye detail, hopefully showing some of what is missing or not apparent in the original jpeg

This and the next post are reference photos. The actual painting was done from a drawing based on both of these photos.

The other one.

Thanks for posting the picture. It is much easier to see that your painting looks very much like Kim. I think the dyed hair threw me off because it is almost the same value as the skin.

Don't worry too much about your digital photo problems. Good values are more important than good colors. And we can see the value range very well.

Two photos
 

John,

Do not ever try to combine two expressions into one painting. It is a recipe for disaster. When I was first starting out as an artist I had to do a movie poster. It was of the guy who had a shoe phone. Anyway, the agency wanted me to combine the top of the actors head with another shot of the bottom of his head. I complied as I was young, poor and wanting to please. The horrible result was never used and I never got another job from that movie company. I have never repeated that mistake.

Your photo is too high contrast. Try Portra NC iso 160, and use a simple white reflector to fill in the dark side. This will give you better skin tone reference. Your skin tones go from light to dark, there are no lovely undertones of blue or green.

Try this exercise. Take a simple head shot in natural daylight, sit your subject next to the photo (a comparable size photo is best) in the same light. The photo helps keep the drawing accurate and you can then see all the wonderful skin tones you miss while using just photos.

2" to 3" from the top
 

I do not agree with that rule. It very much depends on the composition. Check out Sargent. It all depends on the composition and the point of view you are trying to communicate.

Kim
 

Dear John,

In my zeal to provide you with what I thought was valuable information, I neglected to tell you the MANY POSITIVES of your work. I was so blown away by your persistence and hard work, I couldn't wait to pile on the advice. I rarely see that, so I was like an over-anxious nanny! I worked many years as an illustrator in NY, where criticism was direct and we were expected to take it without a whimper. I treated you like a seasoned pro.

I liked your composition very much; it was unusual and expressed a point of view. It created an interesting narrative and mood. The door handle perfectly balanced the head.

Your skin tone sequences were good, though they could have benefited from a few subtle undertones. I believe the Vermeer website deals with that under "local color". That website is wonderful and seems to be a perfect fit with your nature.

You appear to approach your work as I do, you are not simply interested in painting a face but your work has to express an idea. Try if you would, my little exercise, do several small heads, it will speed up your progress. I had to learn that the hard way, ruined acres of canvas, months lost!

You have all the credentials for sucess: talent, a willingness to learn and work hard, and most rarely and importantly, a point of view.

Sharon,

After visiting your website I take back my suggestion about the 2-3". You have beautiful paintings to prove the contrary!

2"-3"
 

Denise, thank you for that! the 2"-3" rule of thumb is probably useful for simple head portraits. However if you want more interesting and unusual compositions you have to push the envelope. I once saw a classic Boston School portrait with the head on the lower third of the painting. It was very effective!

Vermeer painted sharp details in his areas of light. And much less detail is found in his shadows. Also, your reference photos clearly show this.

This manipulation of detail is especially effective when the contrast between light and shadow is as dramatic as in this painting.

I think that if you soften the details in the shadow side of her face and hair, you will be taking a giant step toward "realism" - and I am sure that if Vermeer were still alive he would be proud of your first effort John. :)

Long post
 

Dear Sharon,

In a way I am a seasoned pro, so you are right to tell it like it is. I've been exhibiting my work for twelve years now, both in juried competitions and occasionally at commercial galleries. I've had some sales, done twenty-something commissioned pieces, won some prizes, etc.. In brief, I've been taking advantage of the opportunities available to someone with no formal art training and decades of developing bad habits, but with a great passion for art. It's just that I've rarely exhibited my paintings, for a lot of reasons that probably don't matter.

I've had experience on the other side of the art industry as well. For two years, in fact, I was on the exhibition committee for a very large arts organization in the San Francisco bay area, where I live. Picture this: a middle-aged guy who thinks he can make it as an artist (and is desperate to exhibit his own work) finds himself looking at slides and proposals from all over the world, curating shows, deciding who gets shown and who doesn't, and dealing with the charming eccentricities of the artists. My naive notions about the art world were irreversibly changed.

Given that background, I want to let you know that your comments are exactly the kind of thing I have been looking for. I include Mark and Denise and Mari in this as well. The observations on the eye and skin tones are all well taken. When you give or get a critique it's like an engineering problem. If something isn't working, you point out the problem along with suggestions for a solution. Usually there is a specific fix or an improvement that can be made, if not on this painting then on the next one. It does nobody any good to gloss over bad passages or withold critical comments for fear of hurting somebody's feelings. That would defeat the purpose of the whole exercise. Furthermore, a painting can be flawed, even deeply flawed, and still be good: not a masterpiece maybe, but good. In any event, it's necessary to display the work and pay attention to the response; close the loop by correcting the mistakes and present the revised work for another round. It works the same way in science or art or anything else I can think of where people do things with purpose. The process requires candor on everyone's part. In my case, I think I'm approaching the stage where I'm going to need some workshop or atelier training: because its difficult to apply these suggestions without having someone point out what's missing at the crucial time, rather than after the mistake has insinuated itself into the work.

I don't think the skin tone problem is as acute in this painting as the image in the post might suggest, but I think you've all spotted it. I spent a lot of time today going to portrait websites and downloading images. I've been blowing them up and looking at the actual pixel distributions in the areas of fleshtones at different values. There's a lot of talk about greens and blues and a multiplicity of colors in these areas, but precious little evidence of it in the pixels. Occasionally I'll find some solid green in the deepest shadows, but it usually requires 4X magnification or greater to really begin to see the hues: below that and they just look black. I've no reason to doubt that people are painting the way they say they are painting, so something is going on that causes those tones to be lost in the digitization. I've got the suspicion that the dithering algorithms that come into play when resizing an image are favoring the reds and yellows on downsizing. This is really apparent when I put a painting next to the monitor and compare it to smaller images on screen. The smaller the image the more orange it seems to be. If this is the case it limits interpretation of subtle coloration based on website posts.

I'm definitely going to switch to the Portra the next time I do any photography. You're absolutely correct about the contrast here being too high. I can't do too much about lighting right away as I don't have a proper studio, but I'm sure the film change will help things. I do paint from life when I can get cooperation. Situations like this Kim portrait with the direct sunlight make it very hard to arrange. I'm definitely taking your advice about doing some small head studies; it's a perfect time for that. On Jonathan's Vermeer website: I neglected to mention that when I started painting Kim he had just started the web page and the lessons after the underpainting section were not posted yet. I got way ahead of him and finished the painting before he posted the local color section or any of the rest. Not a very patient student, am I? Still, he was very helpful to me via e-mail.

Finally, I think it was very perceptive of you, Sharon, to notice that I have a narrative bent. I'm much more interested in portraiture that suggests a story or expresses a generalization than I am in stock depictions of Mrs. Pacific-Heights and Fluffy, not that there's anything wrong with that. Ah Ha! I just checked out your website. "Stephanie"!!!!!! I'm humbled.

Atelier links you might be interested in...
 

Hi John,

A couple of atelier links you might be interested in:

1. The Art Renewal Center has an ARC-approved list of ateliers, some of which might be in your neck of the woods here: http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/atelier_list.asp

2. www.Gandygallery.com and the John Pence Gallery www.johnpence.com both have great online galleries where you can view works by atelier-trained painters.

3. www.Classicalrealism.com is the online site for the American Society of Classical Realism. On their "publications" page, I highly recommend Richard Lack's "On the Training of Painters", an inexpensive publication, and the first place where I saw (clearly spelled out) the difference between the Venetian and Flemish methods of creating a painting. If you found the Vermeer site interesting, you should really look this one up. And for more debth, he references the book, "Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters," by Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, which Cynthia offers here on the book link.

I think you'll have lots of opportunities for this sort of study in California.

Thanks Mari, but actually, I didn't know about that book and I'll have to add it to my Art Bookstore. However, in the meantime, here's the link for it at Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...strokeofgenius

Middle-aged Vermeers
 

John, your post was very thoughtful.

I have been rummaging my brain for information that could help you. Mari's last post was extraordinarily helpful. I think you should bite the bullet and go the atelier route if you can. I am primarily self-taught except for the two miserable years I spent at The Boston Museum School. I would have killed for the ateliers they have today.

Never be intimidated by age or circumstance. After toiling in the fields of commercial art for many years I decided to teach myself portraiture starting in my 40's.

Point of view is the single most valuable painting tool. Skillfull paintings without content can be just greeting cards. Read Chogyam Trungpa's "Dharma Art" (Shambala). He is the reason I still paint. I am not proseletizing here. Trungpa gives the most consise defintions of the process of visual perception I have ever read. His discussions on the purpose, power and necessity of aesthetics are profound. He discusses the importance of craftmanship and reverence for ones painting tools.

Nuts and Bolts: or not putting the cart before the horse. (My major failing.)

A.Drawing. Draw as much as you can from life. Learn classical proportions. If you don't know them I will try to describe them or attempt a scan. This is the backbone of painting. I'm not totally sure about anatomy. To quote Ingres "C'est science affreuse." (any French help here?)

B.Learn your mediums. Investigate brushes,paint etc.. Peg Baumgartner says never use cheap quality anything even when you are learning. Keep on hand "The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques " by Ralph Mayer.http://www.portraitartist.com/bookstore/materials.htm

C.Work in natural daylight even if you have to put up a tent. White only. There are color balanced lights you can use to augment daylight.

Some final notes. I will be giving a more consise breakdown of my methods of photography in the photo thread. However here are a few tips to get you going. Do not shoot in open daylight with the subject facing the sun. Pray for overcast days. The subtle illumination is beautiful,the skin tones saturated as the clouds act as a filter. Take advantage of open shade, i.e., under trees. When shooting outdoors if you are near or under trees use an skylight IB filter to get rid of the greens. I only use two Nikon lenses. They are sharp as tacks and were recommended to me by my friend Marilyn Silverstone. She was an accomplished photojournalist for Magnum and could make art out of any situation.They are the NIKKOR 85 mm 1:2 and the Micro-Nikor 55mm 1:28. They are sharp and the shots can be made into beautiful blowups. She used no automatic anything.

p.s.
 

John, something I neglected to clarify in an earlier post, take a simple photo of a head in natural daylight, have it blown up to the size you are painting, place the subject next to the photo. The photo stays still and you can grab the color from the subject. I call it my training wheels approach. Do many. I still work that way as I am still in training.

Thanks, Sharon

The photo with subject sounds like a great idea. I guess it would work just as well with a B&W print as with a color print since you're grabbing the color from the subject.

What I've been doing is using the photos to locate the pupils of the eyes, the nostrils and the mouth to nostril distance. Usually I have done drawings before I do any photography so I have some idea of what I think I want. If the pupils don't show, or the eyes are averted, I use the eye lines. I measure the distances between these landmarks to give me a formula, a set of ratios, that can be easily scaled to the size of the painting. I put four dots of charcoal on the panel where these features are going to go, and then start drawing. I don't bother to draw in the whole outline of the head and other parts of the subject unless I'm worried about a difficult pose. Then I might do a fairly detailed drawing(s) in charcoal on paper. This painting of Kim was started as a four dot drawing, with very little else. Then I just start painting, the eyes, mouth and under-nose shadow first. As long as I keep the four cardinal points located I can reliably get a likeness. I can modify the features if I want and still get back to where I started. I try to get all the drawing and values worked out in the underpainting, usually raw umber and white. Once I start coloring I try to get the subject live as often as possible to check the skin tones, but I often wind up painting from memory. I guess that's where the surrealism creeps in, huh, Denise?

I think this is similar to an algorithm for face recognition by computer, although I'd been using it for a long time before that thought occured to me. There is an interesting thread on this Forum that I have to get back to (about methods for getting a likeness) with information about artists doing something similar. Until I saw that I thought I was unique in the way I was doing this. I know that nobody asked about how I went about things, but I thought it might be useful to somebody.

I really want to thank everyone for this valuable help. There is a ton of information here that's going to take me days to check out.

Singing the Blues
 

Strong, sculptural, and narrative.

The comments have been terrific as well.

The only thing I would add are the blues. The photo source has a lot of blue-violet in the transitions and shadows which appear to be absent in the painting.

Blues
 

Thanks, Jeanine

Yes, there are blues in the photo. This was taken outdoors backed on two sides by a wall of bamboo that does not show, and a blue sky above. They're lousy photos compared to what others have been showing. I didn't transfer the blue to the interior setting. The entire room where the cabinets are is fir wainscoting up to a height of 66" and there are fir beams that form a coffered ceiling. I tried to keep everything warm because I couldn't rationalize any cool reflections from all the warm wood in there. It looks like I overdid it some.

The comments and suggestions have been terrific, haven't they?

I've got another painting of Kim that I'm going to post eventually. Before that, I've got one of a different subject that I started while I was finishing this painting and finished after I'd started the second Kim painting. Confusing? Anyway, the background/narrative elements get more prominent in the ones to follow. I'm also buying Chris Saper's skin tones book!

One thing you have to remember with photographs - concerning people's eyes - is that if you are too close when you take the picture, or if they are looking directly into the lens, their eyes will appear crossed. Youve painted them as they appear in the photo, but as a painter, you get the privilege that photographers DON'T get, you get to straighten them out. Just move that right eye (her left) over to the center a bit more. A relatively easy fix.