Help with glazing flesh tones please
 

I would be so grateful for help with my glazing problem. I completed an underpainting in raw umber and titanium white. It is a painting of a little girl. I am very happy with the underpainting and have resolved all the shadows, etc., with the underpainting.

I then put two thin glazes of burnt umber over this. But my next step to paint on the scumble of flesh tone isn't working! The problem seems to be that half of this girl's face is darker because it's in shadow. Not too dark, but a little darker, like the shadow on the side of a nose. The scumble looks fine when I put it on the lighter side of the face, but the scumble looks almost WHITE when I paint it over the shadow side. And if I use a very thin glaze (not much paint and lots of Liquin) then I can't even see any difference at all. I am using zinc white in my scumble so it'll be transparent.

I made my flesh color out of different mixtures of all or some of the following: raw umber, zinc white, raw sienna and burnt umber. The problem isn't the flesh tone, I don't think.

With two thin glazes of burnt umber, her face looks a little 'brown'. I might have put on too much? But with only one thin glaze, she hardly had any color. I kept wiping the 'scumbles' off of that because there wasn't enough color in the underpainting and I felt like the color under the scumbled flesh color should be a little closer to the flesh color (in tone at least).

I've done this before and didn't have any problem with scumbling over shadows so I'm stumped. I will try and post a photo this evening or tomorrow as soon as I figure out how to load the program that manipulates the photos. I realize it's hard to help when there is no photo, but perhaps someone can offer me an idea to try tomorrow! This is my first commission and it's due mid December. Yikes!

Joan

Here are the photos
 

I had to shoot the painting at an angle to avoid glare from the flash.

Thank you, Joan

Try again . . .
 

Here is the full painting.

And close-up.
 

Here is a close-up of her face. The photo is a bit distorted, for some reason her face is tall and thinner than in the full photo.

To glaze or scumble?
 

After doing a search for every post with the word 'glaze' and 'flesh' in it this morning, I have read and reread a lot of old posts and learned alot.

But . . . . I found conflicting, or rather confusing, info about my next step. I'm not sure whether using white in my next step (making it a scumble, I think I have my terms right) OR just use glazes of raw umber, raw sienna and burnt umber. But I need some kind of white to build up the lights, just adding glazes will make this little girl too dark.

I think I need to darken the background next. I think the medium toned background I have now is making it hard for me to judge the tone of the color I put on the face.

Thanks, I look forward to hearing your comments,
Joan

I think you are mixing together two different approaches here. If you are doing an opaque monochromatic underpainting you are setting up your painting to be glazed (no white). Therefore your underpainting needs to be lighter than the desired result since all glazes darken. I am not a proponent of this approach, as I have often noted.

Scumbling, as I practice it, is based on applying translucent layers of paint over previously built up color in order to unify areas and to give them a translucent glow. I have a demo on my web site and you can see the effect of this demonstrated there. (second row from bottom, right side image) http://www.fineartportrait.com/workshop_demo.html
The painting in my demo was not completed due to the time restraints of leading a workshop but in real life I would continue to rescumble and define until I achieved the desired degree of finish I was interested in.

Obviously if you attended one of my workshops the whole procedure would make a lot more sense since I explain things stroke by stroke as I go along.

It wouldn't make any sense to scumble one color over light and shadow since, I assume, you wouldn't want to unify and fuse both areas and therefore flatten the form.

Also the whites of her eyes are scaring me. Way too light!

Thank you Marvin
 

Thank you Marvin for your reply. Yes, I see that I must have my underpainting too dark. That must be the problem, but when I look at the painting, it doesn't seem that dark. Thank you for clarifying the two different methods. I'm still not sure what to do next, but I'll get there. I may have to make this more of an alla prima painting. That's the only direction I can see it going. Thanks again for your help,

Joan

Marvin - comparing the scumbled pic with the previous shot, it looks as if a thin white scumble was applied to the entire picture (every value appears just a little lighter). Is this the case, or was there an intermediate step between the two shots, or is it merely lighting inconsistencies in the photo?

Thanks,

Minh

Well, Joan, I hear ya. After doing the same searching on the site, I found the same info you did, and had the same problems. Then I pestered some people offline for more info, and they were helpful but I think there are just some things that you have to see to understand.

Like you, I switched to a direct (but not alla prima - I take too long) method, what Kurt Anderson calls a "searching" method in his book. By this, he means you start out mostly right, and get more and more right as the painting progresses.

Marvin, his method is much like yours, and I confess, I have studied your online demo for hours and hours. I'm sure it is a eureka moment in person and wish your classes were closer so I could take one.

So Joan, hang in there. Your drawing is great, which is half the battle. I can't help you with the painting, just wanted to "validate your feelings."

Best
Lisa

Lisa, thank you for your post. It is so nice to hear words of encouragement about my drawing, by which I mean the rendering of the girl. I have been so frustrated these past couple of days, I decided that my underpainting must have been too dark, so I did the whole thing over but lighter this time.

As Karin Wells said in one of her posts, it's the knowledge that is lacking (by some) that makes this difficult. Well, I can render an object well enough but I certainly am lacking in that knowledge when it comes to color.

Thank you again for your kind and thoughtful reply. I am going to stick with it, I've gotten this far.

Joan

Joan,

There is an interesting discussion going on in this thread regarding underpaintings and related topics.

Thank you, Mike
 

Thank you Mike, I did see that thread yesterday morning when I did my search. I read the whole thing and the info about backgrounds was helpful, but I find I am looking for some specific advice on:

1. glazing fleshtones using zinc white (I believe this would be a scumble) vs. glazing using only translucent glazes. That is my dilemma.

2. And just how dark the underpainting should be. I have some experimenting to do ahead of me. I did not make it darker than 50/50 mix of titanium white and raw umber on the face.

Thank you for taking the time to reply, I'm glad somebody out there is going through the posts and generously taking time to reply. It really is so generous of everyone to give up even a few minutes of their time to post advice to help someone else. I appreciate it tremendously.

Joan

Minh- I scumbled over most of the areas. I never used staright white. I used appropriate values and hues for each area, basically an average of the particular area. In the shadow areas I scumbled in some of the background color. Again this is to unify and set things up for further paint applications.

Lisa- You should take a 6 day workshop. Last year I had two people drive to North Carolina from Cincinnati OH. A really good "Ah Hah!" is well worth the trip. People were Ah Hahing left and right. Or perhaps they were just gasping for air from laughing so much?