Demo and Dialogue
One of my favorite mediums to work in is paint, specifically oil paint. One of my favorite subjects to paint are portraits of people. I have painted landscapes, and Still Life’s as well, and on my ‘things to paint’ list are a portrait of my dog Molly and a ‘Rowing’ scene of Andy in his youth. These later two paintings I’m doing for myself and for no other reason than I want to, which is a luxury I very seldom give myself!
As a side job and to infuse my studio bank account with funds, I teach portrait drawing and painting at the Art Students League of Denver. I find peoples’ faces interesting and have a particular love for painting flesh tones as there is so much color theory that goes into mixing skin colors. It is my favorite class to teach as I’m basically showing people my approach to drawing and painting portraits! As noted in my last post, I always start my creative process with a drawing. Once I’ve sketched out the face and problem solved any areas that needed additional study, I then sketch the portrait in paint.
After that, I mix the flesh tones and any other colors I might need to complete the portrait. Like drawing, mixing paint can be a meditative process as it takes time, reflection, observation and strategic thinking in regard to what colors I see and what colors I need to mix to recreate the flesh tones I’m observing. To harmonize the skin tones, I always start with a base mixture of which I then create my shadows and highlights both warm and cool. I also like to mix my own blacks because I find that black out of a tube is dead, whereas if you mix your own you can create colorful blacks that can lean in any direction you like be it blue, red, green etc…
Once I have my colors mixed then I’m ready to apply paint to canvas. Taking the line from ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ movie, I like to paint spherically which means I move around the canvas painting areas simultaneously. I find that by working this way as opposed to painting from left to right or top to bottom allows me to create an image that is more cohesive.
The images I’m including in this post are taken from a demo I did in one of my recent Portrait Painting classes at the League. Collectively they show the step-by-step process I do when I paint. The subject is a Native American man that I found on the internet (thank God for this technology as I can now find subject matter from around the world!) Recently I’ve been focusing on portraits of Native Americans because I find their faces so incredibly interesting, strong, sometimes defiant in gaze and their traditional dress shows a love and respect for their cultural heritage that I respect beyond words.
My next painting series will focus on this indigenous group, specifically people from the tribes that were forced to walk the Trail of Tears. I’ve only started my preliminary research and have tons more I need to do before I’m ready to start the series. I also need to figure out if I’m going to paint these portraits in color or use a more neutral palette of sepia, black, white and gray. The challenge I’m noticing in my preliminary research is that many of the photographic references available are not in color. This is one of the reasons I’ve not yet started the series. I have a lot more research to do both in finding reference images and in understanding the culture of this most noble group of Americans. Their story is not mine to tell, but rather I’d like to show my respect and admiration for their strength and understanding of our natural environment. When I use these references as subjects for my painting demos, they are also helping me familiarize myself with their facial features and figure out what color palette I want to use should I end up working in color.
After the initial sketch is drawn in paint and my flesh tones are mixed, I then proceed to ground the painting by painting in the eyelash line and iris, the nostril holes, and the lips all in black. This grounding of facial features is the first stage of underpainting. From there, I begin to paint around these features one value at a time. Sometimes I will paint large areas of value first, other times I paint the values as I see them no matter the size. In this demo I started with the midtones, followed by darker shadows and moved up the value scale to the lighter tones and highlights.
With each addition of value, the area between the facial features begins to come together. I don’t worry about the blockiness or sketchiness of the rough strokes as they transition from one value to the next because I view this stage as an underpainting. This takes the pressure off me to make it perfect and I can just focus on painting what I see as I move around the painting.
Another strategy that I use is I paint edge to edge, meaning that if I get to say the edge of the face, I will then paint what is next to it, for example the start of the headdress, clothing, or the color of the background environment. I suppose this could also be described as working from the inside out in that I start with the central facial features, the eyes (always the eyes), nose and mouth and continue to work outward from there.
As a side note: I always start with the eyes because they are the focal point of faces. Perhaps that is where the saying “the eyes are the windows to our soul” comes from? In addition to being the ‘windows’ the eyes are also the measuring tool I use to make sure all my facial features are in correct proportion. Placing, rendering, and painting the eyes correctly is the key to making a successful portrait, meaning if the eyes are off chances are everything else will be off as well!
Once I complete one pass through, I start this process all over again. Working spherically also helps to show a visual sense of accomplishment if I’m not able to get the painting finished in one sitting, which I’m usually not able to do because my studio time is so limited these days.
If I end up running out of time in a sitting, when I return, I will mix up what I call a ‘painting cocktail’ of Galkyd light and Cold wax medium to create a clear glaze that I paint over the dry paint (assuming I’ve been away long enough for the oil paint to dry) so that I can work wet on wet again; doing this allows me to avoid hard edges which are not present in the human face. Hard edges flatten images out which are counterproductive when one is striving to create the illusion of three dimensionality on a two dimensional surface, ie a canvas. Once I mix up this highly toxic cocktail (not meant for human consumption I might add), I start my painting process all over again until I’ve completed the under painting and am ready to fine tune and finish the work with details, such as eye color, lip color, highlights in hair or specific strands of hair that are unique to the individual or the details we see in the clothing or environment, always working in a circular fashion as I go. When I’m getting close to the completion of the painting I always try and stop just before I think it is finished. Then I give it a day or two, come back and study it for a bit to determine if there is anything else I need to do or if I have indeed completed the painting. I find this strategy is helpful in avoiding the pit fall of overworking a painting which if done can lead to less successful results. Nine times out of ten, I deem the painting complete. Sometimes I tweak it, but most of the time I find the painting is finished. Now you know my complete painting process from start to finish, I hope you’ve enjoyed todays Demo and Dialog on painting!
