David
 

36" x 30" Oil on Linen

Hopefully this portrait is finished. BUT, a portrait is only finished when the client says it is :)

Detail.

What a moving portrait! It definitely has an "Old Master" style. If I may ask, how was the pose and clothing chosen? Does he or the family have an interest in marine or boating pursuits?

Beautiful, interesting portrait. Could this portrait have anything to do with your interest in George Inness?

Beautiful, Karin. I am glad you posted this now. I really needed to see your background. I am trying to decide how to paint the mighty Mississippi river behind a Civil War veteran from Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Thanks - and my little girl just told me I should say it's handsome because he is a boy!

Rebecca

This young man really enjoys being outdoors. He climbed the local mountain (Mt. Monadnock) on the day he came to my studio and hand carved that walking stick I used in his painting. The rock he is sitting on is in my yard.

I struggled mightily with the background (made up) and the fact that I never painted a landscape before really shows. Because of this struggle, I started looking into landscapes and fell in love with the work of George Inness.

For the past few weeks, I have been painting nothing but landscapes. Fortunately I learned something and now landscape backgrounds won't be so darn hard for me to paint.

Karin,

This is a fantastic portrait, outstanding! What can I say! Obviously the landscape painting has benefited the handling of the spatial depth, but the compositional elements are beautiful. For the background did you stick with black and white as a substitute for blue? As a grissaile or underlayer, which colour did you use?

Yours,
Patrick

Yes, I use black + white to make the color "blue."

And I use raw umber + white for grisaille (underpainting). On this particular painting, only the face, hands, and legs are underpainted in the traditional way with raw umber and white. The rest is underpainted with flat areas of (toned down) "local color."

Hi Karin,

If I may ask, which black is best for making the blue?

Beautiful!
 

Hi Karin,
I haven't been painting since the kids got out of school for the summer but today I had some time so I had to log onto the Forum and see what you've been doing. I knew there would be a beautiful painting by you in the portrait unveilings section. I was right! Magnificent. (It's interesting, most of your portraits that I've seen seem to be of girls . . . Somehow I expected a portrait of a female.)

Karin, what do you mean by

"The rest is underpainted with flat areas of (toned down) "local color." "

Are 'flat areas' just all one solid tone of the particular color (for example, the red)? How is it "toned down"?

Thank you in advance for your answer and it's glad to be back in touch,
Joan