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[Patricia Joyce]

Steven!!!!!!!!!
Oh it is so good to open up the forum and see your name. First, just to know you are around. Because you contributed so much to my development as an artist, I feel partial to ya! Your critiques taught me more than I could have ever learned in books or any classroom I have ever been in. I would advise any newcomers on the forum to go back into the archives and read EVERY critique Steven ever gave on portrait drawings. His lessons, his eye, and of course, his good humor and wit are priceless and will really teach you how to LOOK at your drawing/reference.

That said, I KNEW something was still wrong about the mouth and you spotted it right away, the simplest, slightest adjustment and now his mouth is dead on - I was holding it up in mirrors, looking at it upside down, and I knew it was off, just couldn't see where. THANK YOU!

I will revisit the ear, I think you are right just looking at it now. And I will go in darker as I finish it up, but you read my mind, in that I was afraid of going too dark because of the reference photo!!

Great to hear from you Steven. Hope you are painting up a storm and doing well, and that you come here to visit us as often as is possible...

Now, back to work!

[Steven Sweeney]

Originally Posted by Patricia Joyce

I would advise any newcomers on the forum to go back into the archives and read EVERY critique Steven ever gave on portrait drawings.

This is actually illegal now, having been uncovered as one of the nefarious abusive interrogation techniques used against prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

It would probably never have come to light, had not the music being blasted into the compound 24-hours a day been a compilation of my high school guitar covers of John Denver tunes.

Next up: Mimeographed reproduction of my (Bob) Bouguereau copies from early art school.

[Patricia Joyce]

I would like to have done this one more time before giving it to dad, but I ran out of time. He does really like it, it created a great deal of emotion. So I guess that is good. But . . . I am very unhappy with the finished product. I wanted to find a fixative which would rid the drawing of that graphite shine. I could only find a product by Grumbacher which advertised as for charcoal, pencil and pastels. It was terrible! It toned everything down so much and made the darkest darks look kind of grainy. I was very careful to spray as directed. I will never use the product again.

So as you can see there is a terrible sheen to the pic. I could not get a good shot of it. I guess the good news is that the family enjoy it, and they do. And most important, Dad loves it.

Life . . . full of lessons. Anyone have suggestions of a GOOD product to use as a fixative? Julie Dean, I know you mentioned something, but i can't find your post which mentioned it - - - HELP!

Thanks for all your input. As always, each piece teaches me so much.

[Steven Sweeney]

Pat

[Patricia Joyce]

Thank you Steven,
I have printed this out, to keep and reread! I am at my office so I cannot look at the can, but I can tell you it was NOT a reworkable fixative, so it was more of a varnish. This was a tough lesson and one I have definately learned from. I will only use the reworkable fixative in the future, which I have used in the past, but it never gets rid of the graphite sheen entirely.

I do put my drawings behind glass.

[Mike McCarty]

Hey Patricia,

This sounds like the product that I've been using lately.

I've had pretty good luck using this as Steven described above. I think it's important to go at it in a sparing, cautious manner, and work slowly into the level of coverage you desire. I don't remember if the "matte" finish was an option. My own personal taste is for a "matte" look so I would have picked this up pretty quickly. Maybe if you chose the "gloss" (if there is one) this would not make as big a difference on those areas of "sheen."

Also a warning -- don't use this product with a bic lighter to kill mesquitos. As you can see I managed to set the sky on fire, which did not endear me to my neighbors here in the gulf states region.

[Steven Sweeney]

I thought that might be the case, Pat. I can think of no reason why one would ever need to apply varnish to paper-backed artwork, short of desiring a decoupage look. That of course is the opposite of what you wanted, and I suspect that the finish you used made the graphite's shininess more, rather than less, evident -- which is precisely what varnish and lacquer are supposed to do (as well as protect the surface) -- in addition to darkening the values of everything from sketched areas to the paper itself.

The term "workable fixative" can create misconceptions. It's workable in the sense that you're just kind of hitting the "Save" button on your project up to that point, but you can come back in and continue to draw. Even if you don't intend to do any more work after applying the fixative (that is, your "Saved" version becomes your Final), it's a perfectly adequate finish sealer in its own right. As mentioned earlier, don't use any more than necessary to prevent smudging of the drawing -- nothing will serve conservation purposes more than using acid-free art materials and then keeping to a minimum the addition of various chemical compounds such as spray finishes or fixatives.

By the way, you may know this, but for future reference, both glass and acrylic are readily available in nonglare types, which will also help diminish graphite sheen.

If it makes you feel any better, I once painted an entire log house (all by myself, which is more neurotic than praiseworthy) with something called "latex stain," which seemed like a brilliant solution to a messy proposition. Unfortunately, logs have to "breathe," and without being able to, they begin to deteriorate quickly. The entire two-story house had to be stripped and properly stained with the genuine article. I don't usually enjoy revealing my missteps, especially when they're so expensive and public, because it conflicts with my persona of infallible resourcefulness and self-reliance, but perhaps you can take some solace in having simply "joined the club." We're everywhere. You just have to look around. It's the nature of things, and as teacher Pema Chodron often reminds us, we "don't have to freak out about it."

[Patricia Joyce]

Thanks, for the heads-up and enjoyable tales, guys! Oh Steven, I would just have to redraw this portrait, stripping a whole log cabin . . . O U C H ! ! ! !

It must have been a varnish I got and I will not use it again! That is, unless those pesky mosquitos don't leave me alone