As before, I have limited access to models in person. There are a number of online life drawing sessions that I’ve signed up for, and can of course use myself as a model. I’ve noticed a number of local life drawing clubs have announced they’re reopening — unfortunately in the new year.

Areas of focus / effort / concerns:

• Colour Choices
  I continue my focus on building a colour & pigment intuition
  
• Variations
  I need to push myself to try different styles and approaches. I need to focus on taking different paths through them.
  
• Consistency
  I’m not sure how to focus on this, but my lack of consistent ‘style’ or ‘result’ bothers me. Every painting, when I look at them, feels like they are from a different artist’s hand. Beyond ‘paint more’, I’m unsure how to bring about cohesiveness. Also, do I want consistency? I don’t know.

Reflective Summary

• Materials
  Lead primed linen. I get it. I’ve never painted on it before so I decided to approach Self Portrait 2022 #2 on lead primed linen. The paint simply glides on — no scrubbing, no fighting.
  
  It has a friction to it, but far less than gesso & canvas. It is smooth, but not slick like masonite. How much of this effect comes from the tight weave of the linen, versus the lead priming?
  
• Planning
  I haven’t been good with planning, tending to approach each work in the same intuitive way I do drawing. But I’m much more comfortable with drawing, and capable of working things out on the page. I’m not so much with painting.
  
  I need to make an effort to go through the planning steps to crystallize my ideas before I get frustrated with the paint not doing what I want.
  
  → It is very strange how I avoid picking up dry media, to draw/compose/sketch. Drawing is the foundation of painting, and I love drawing, so why am I finding myself going straight into paint?
  
  → In doing my research around the self-portraits, and mood/atmosphere research points, I’m reminded how little I plan. I intuitively approach, and this is no longer sufficient. In the exercise of ‘creating mood and atmosphere’ I spent a great deal of time in my reference collection. The result is ridiculous, but instructive.
  
• Learning from Pastels
  • Colour
    In a couple of exercises I leveraged a wide palette of pastels. This seemed to enable me to think in colour, without struggling with discovering what mixes I needed as I painted.
    
    In the latter exercises I leveraged this learning to create a ‘colour map’ ahead of time with all the mixes I thought I needed, and documented them on a page. I could then affix this page next to my canvas, and reference it as I worked.
  • Layering
    Pastel layering was instructive, I think. I think if I were to exercise more patience with the slow drying time of oils, I’d be able to more effectively layer in colours. I need to practice this, as I can see that ‘connecting’ the layers might be difficult.
    
    This thinking was very beneficial in my sketchbook piece Study of Tro, as well as in my mood/atmosphere piece.
    
• Character doesn’t mean “A character”, mood isn’t just colour
  • In comics, the figure drawing is often referred to as the “acting”. “How well does the artist show the acting?” The pose of the hands, the expression. Gesture of the body, etc.
  • With my attempts, below, I was very one note. I need to plan a bit more, and consider multiple angles in future efforts.
    

Quick Navigation Links:

• Research Notes: Self Portraits
• Self Portrait Study
• Head and Shoulder Study
• Research Notes: Mood and Atmosphere
• Creating Mood and Atmosphere
• Conveying Character
• Supporting Material
  • Sketchbook
  • Influences
  • Reading
  • Bibliography

Research 1: Self-portraits

I recorded my notes in a separate post: Link here

Exercise: Self Portrait

• Given my struggles with colour, I decided to do a number of exercises in Pastel. Here, I could select from a very wide palette and spend more time thinking about placement and structure, rather than mixing.

• After reading The Oil Painter’s Color Handbook¹ I’ve been thinking about high vs low chroma relationships, and warm vs cool hue relationships. I wanted to try leveraging these in this work.

And Repeat

I bonded a lead-primed linen offcut to a masonite board. I left the selvedge edge untouched, as I like the effect. This is my first time painting on lead primed surface. It was enjoyable, and I need to figure out what specifically lead to that (was it linen? lead priming? a surface with no give? I’m uncertain)

Observations:

• I think part of my ‘control of paint’ struggle, is not take care in selecting the specific paints to work with. I’ve been reading books on colour, and leaned on them to give me some ideas.
  
• I was too heavy handed with the caterpillar eyebrows. My attempts to fix that were not great. Something to be careful of in future.
  
• The black is Pthalo Blue and Indian Red. I could have gone lighter here, i think.
  
• I prefer how I modeled the ear in the ‘hulk’ version. But I’d wiped away a lot of my under-painting after an initial bad pass at applying paint.
  
• I like how the linen texture let me dry brush in some stubble.
  

Exercise: Head and Shoulder Portrait

The pastel self-portrait, above, led me to attempt the use of pastels during timed life drawing sessions with London Drawing. They provide online portrait session on Saturday, which have been a fantastic way for me to push myself. Although I was not choosing the model’s poses, the sessions provide for interesting models, and commentary from the facilitators.

Research 2: Mood and atmosphere in portraits

I’ve captured my research notes in another post. Link here

Exercise: Creating mood and atmosphere

For subject matter, I dove into my reference library. When I first began drawing, I picked up a number of large photographic reference sets. I’ve continued to expand that library over the years, as it is filled with ideas.

I’ve chosen a somewhat ridiculous reference from that collection. A male model in Tudor dress. I’ve edited out many items in the reference as they just clutter the composition. What is important, here, is the model’s expression and the gesture of the hands. I wanted ‘menace’, though I don’t think I was successful. It looks more like ‘curiousity’ or perhaps simply directing the viewer to the left-side hand. “Is this a hand?”. Ambition outstripping time and ability, perhaps.

I stopped here. It reads reasonably well from a distance. A few issues, the biggest I think is that I was more ambitious than I had time. I had to stop to move on to other exercises.

Observations: I enjoyed this immensely, partially due to its ridiculous pose. I need a lot of practice with cloth if I’m going to travel down this path. I’m fairly pleased with the face.

Exercise: Conveying Character

Here, I want “Joy” in the expression and pose. Unlike my prior paintings, I decided to spend some time drawing in my model’s expression, and laying out the elements.

I want the whole painting to be warm, so I went with an Indian Red undertone — a bit thick and I’ll have to handle that. For the background, I want a gradient that will offset the model’s dark hair. So lighter, perhaps yellower tones, above leading to dark below to offset the model’s highlighted hand. I want a strong angle in that gradient, to mirror the angle of the face. “joy projecting forward”.

Conclusion of using the line drawing: I need to think more in terms of “colour” or “contrast” zones when doing the under drawing, instead of line work. Otherwise I’m liable to just fill in with single tones.

Sketchbook

The key lesson I applied here was “fat over lean” — my prior paintings suffer from a lack of understanding of the role of mediums. Here, I used thinner to create a plan, and then paint largely straight from the tube to accomplish the rest. I leveraged my paint-map from the “mood and atmosphere” exercise, above, to help guide my choices.

Influences

• The intensity of the three workers in the center is intimidating. Their eyes — or lack thereof — is unsettling. It’s like the workers are accosting the artist. The simplification of the rest of the people turn them into landscape. Indifferent observers.
• The dark colours appear to enhance the dark mood.

Reading

• The Oil Painter’s Color Handbook¹
  • Consolidation of information that is fairly broadly available, including in syllabus. But explained in a way that makes sense to me. Provides for some useful exercises that build upon Part 2 of this unit — I’ll do my best to work through those as well.
  • Provides some useful frameworks for helping choosing palettes.
  • Provides many works, from various artists, to visually demonstrate the topics in the text. Very useful.

Bibliography

¹ Casey, T. M. (2022) The Oil Painter’s Color Handbook. (1st ed.) New York: Monacelli Press.