Gathering Momentum

These past few weeks, as I've moved into the new studio and resumed a more complete painting schedule, it's been something of a struggle to get going. Every time I'd pick up a brush there were literally dozens of other tasks--unpacking materials, sorting old paintings, etc.--that whispered urgently for attention. Nevertheless, like an old freight engine, I've been gathering a bit of momentum.

In other words, studio work is picking up. Over the past several days I've had two new sitters in for portraits, and I've two more portraits in the works. I've also managed a few more cat sketches, in preparation for that one, which is next on the list because the lady who asked me for it is starting to get impatient. And of course there are always drawings to do and ideas to sketch out. Come to think of it, I did a small, alla prima sketch today (8x6 inches) on a gessoed panel that I'll photograph and post in the next day or two.

Life is good.

Portrait of Roy

This portrait of my friend Roy is nearing completion. It needs some work on the dark passages, particularly in the hair and areas of shadow on the left side of the head and neck.

Portraiture was traditionally thought to be the most difficult of the various genres of art, and for good reason, in my view. Portraits require the painter to not only achieve a reasonable likeness (although everyone misses nuances here and there), but also appropriate color, a good pose, and some kind of emotional content. John Sargent used to say that portraits are paintings of people with something wrong about the mouth. I think that's a fair assessment.

Portrait Sketches

Despite my cat commission, life goes on in the portrait world, too. Here are a couple of portrait studies, color sketches on canvas panels. The male is on a 14x11 panel, the female on a 12x9. Each photo is a bit different from the colors in the studio.

Neither is completed yet, although the painting of the woman is pretty close. Each of these has been challenging in its own way. The male portrait is from two life sessions plus a reference photo, but needs a bit more work. The female portrait is a posthumous one, and done from a black and white reference besides, which is always difficult. Looking at them here online it could almost be that the reverse is true. I'm uncertain why that should be, except that the value contrasts are a bit stronger in the posthumous photo reference than in the male portrait, done in the studio, where the direction of light made the sitter's face look a bit flat. Clearly there is more to do on the central areas of his face, particularly to enhance values and color. Since there's more to do on each, so stay tuned to see what the final outcome will be.

In Like a Lion

This month began with a blizzard. Payback for the mild November and December. Over the last couple of days, a warm air mass overrode the existing cold air mass in the upper Midwest, resulting in snow, "thundersnow" (a woman in Des Moines was struck by lightning), and ice. The interstate highways are closed. All 99 Iowa counties are declared disaster areas. Eighty people had to be rescued from their cars at the Audubon exit of Interstate 80 yesterday afternoon. Dreadful weather. Don't go outside weather.

But here in the studio, I've been snug, warm, and happily working on those cats. I'm also working on a portrait of my friend Roy, who graciously sat for me last weekend, during our last big snowstorm. And there are always books and technical information to study. So the March lion hasn't managed to bite me, however much it's mauled the rest.

So here is a study of a cat. Actually, a sleeping calico.

Cats, cats, cats

These drawings are graphite on paper, ranging in size from 8x10 to around 5x7. They're studies for part of a commission I'm working on. Some of the fun of this is studying the anatomy of cats (and by extension, other quadrupeds). Most animals that go on four legs have similar articulations and bones, so understanding one helps a great deal with others. I partly accepted this commission because of the challenge of animal anatomy. I've painted a lot of subjects, except animals. So this is an opportunity to learn, and I'm treating it as such. These studies will probably not be part of the final painting, but they've taught me some very valuable things.

Studio

A roomy and comfortable place to work is the dream of most artists, I think. These photos, taken a few days ago, show my newly-remodelled studio as I've been moving in. Note that there are still boxes to unpack and shelves to rearrange (I'm doing it a little at a time). The walls are a beautiful dark green that will complement skin tones.

There is plenty of room for storage and room enough to step back and then forward as I paint. You can see the model's chair next to the easel, a couple of work tables by the windows, and the cleaning station in another corner.

It's mighty good to be home.

President

Since it's February, and also because I did a painting of our other February president not long ago, I dug up a famou old photo to copy.

I was trying out some Blockxx paint today and decided to do a sketch of one of our past presidents. This is 8x6 on gessoed panel. I used white, yellow ochre, cad yellow light, cad red, a DaVinci red rose sample, Blockxx Blue (phthalo based), mars black, and raw umber. I toned the panel to about value 5 first, then just painted this alla prima.

Now that my studio is finally less cluttered, I've been working more. The next few days will be color sketches for a commission I've been promising since last fall. Then maybe a final touchup of a commission I delivered a couple of months ago.

At least it's warm in the studio.

Cat Commission

Commissions are the life blood of many an artist's career. They're most commonly portraits, but once in a while someone is commissioned to do a picture of a home or a pet or even, rarely, a favorite car or motorcycle. I've just been commissioned to do a portrait of not one but three cats. Given that I've not done much in the line of animal pictures, this one promises to be challenging. It isn't that drawing and painting an animal is much different than doing a person or a still life; like any other subject, if you look critically, plan, and paint what is before you, you're likely to produce a reasonably accurate representation. In preparing for painting cats I'm doing a few graphite drawings of various felines. And just for practice on non-humans, I've been daubing away at the dog portrait on the right. It isn't complete, but nearly so. This is 8"x 8" on gessoed panel, the "sitter" is a friend's pug. I will probably give this one to the dog's owners.

Another silverpoint

These last few days I've been working in silverpoint, drawing skulls. Drawing skills are crucial for portraiture, particularly to understand the underlying bone structure and musculature. So I've been doing some skulls as a way to better understand the face. As to why I use silverpoint (a more demanding medium) instead of charcoal or graphite, the answer is mostly because it interests me and because it forces accuracy. With silverpoint I can't achieve truly dark darks the way I can with charcoal but on the other hand, close attention can give enough value steps to provide sufficient definition of form. It's rather like an exercise with paint wherein one starts with a relatively lighter color and can still manage to achieve decent contrast between cast shadow and light. And since silverpoint is pretty much indelible, intial accuracy of drawing is crucial if the drawing is to be even close to representation. Here's one of the skulls, done on an 8"x6" gessoed hardboard panel. The grouond is actually white, not gray, but that's the limitation of my photographic skills.

Silverpoint

I've started doing a few drawings in silverpoint as a way of working on my skills. Silverpoint is in some ways a delightful medium because of the soft gray tones you can achieve but it's also demanding because it isn't erasable. The tool is a rod of annealed silver that lays down a line that eventually tarnishes (just as real silverware does), turning a lovely gray-brown when exposed to air for varying periods of time. Early Renaissance painters who used tempera often made careful underdrawings in silverpoint since it doesn't smear and remains intact. Like those artists, I did the drawing at right on a small panel prepared with traditional gesso (hide glue and whiting) because I like the smoothness of the toothy surface and the sturdiness of the board. This one is "The Dying Woman," and measures 7"x5".

A New Study

Let's make it a record: two posts in one long weekend. This is a study I've been working on (now approaching completion) of an old Saturday Evening Post cover of George Washington by Joseph Leyendecker, one of the premier illustrators, along with his friend Norman Rockwell, of the golden age of illustration. This one was from the late 1930s and was featured on a February cover.

My version is 12"x 9" on panel and is a bit different than Leyendecker's; I added background wallpaper to emulate the Stars and Stripes and used my own palette of colors rather than trying to match those in the original. If you'd like to see some more of his works, try this website: http://www.curtispublishing.com/List/html/LeyendeckerMayer.html for a huge list.

The New Year

If you haven't looked in here in a while, welcome. If you've checked in regularly, mea culpa for the hiatus. Life got complicated during the fall, mostly because of the illnesses of two close family members. Henceforth, with family emergencies finally ended and life back to normal, I expect to post here considerably more often. So if I've disappointed you before, take heart and come back again, 'cause there'll be new stuff here on a more regular basis.

Studio remodelling is done and I've moved in (although there is still a lot of "stuff" in boxes) and gotten back to a wider variety of work. During the fall I managed to complete a portrait commission, which I've posted on the Heartland Studio site, and worked rather sporadically on sketches, drawings, and other items. Here's a look at the new space. Notice the commissioned portrait on the easel. This is the painting I delivered only a few days ago. Tough to work in the midst of such confusion...

Thanks again for being patient (if you are) and checking in once in awhile. I'll be in touch.

The summer's been dreadful for painting. The main studio area is still a shambles from remodelling; the walls aren't finished nor is the ceiling and there is dust everywhere.

I've been working sporadically, mostly on a portrait commission that's due in September, but even that work has been difficult to manage with workmen in and out and nowhere else to go to set up. If I had known how long this was going to take, I might have rented space elsewhere, but now it's probably too late. Live and learn I suppose.

We did a couple of outdoor festivals these past few weeks, one here in Iowa and another in Virginia, and those went quite well--well enough that we're considering a couple more this fall and in the spring. Festivals are a mixed bag, in my experience. It is important to choose carefully, for one thing. If you do a show, be sure of the emphasis. Some outdoor shows seem to emphasize crafts rather than fine art; that often means, in turn, that based on past experience the folks who arrive for the show aren't there for paintings. One of our outdoor shows was mostly crafts; we won't do that one again. The other was about evenly divided between the two and looks like it will develop into a good venue.

I'm posting a pic of our booth at the Virginia show.

The past month has been very busy owing to a summer show schedule. May 28th was a one-day show and sale; coming up this weekend is an outdoor, one-day festival; and the weekend after is a three-day event. Needless to say, I've been preoccupied with checking inventory, varnishing and framing works for the shows, and trying to occasionally make time to paint. I've painted around a dozen small works ranging in size from 6x8 to 9x12 but haven't had time to shoot photos yet. Maybe after the show this weekend.

There are a also quite lot of works in progress, but those won't be ready to show for a while, except the nearly completed portrait "Lily," which was posted at my online gallery, Heartland Studio.
More work later. Thanks for looking in.

Whitaker Workshop #16

And here is my own painting at the end of Day 5.

The photo is not only out of focus but there's glare on the top of the head. Still, this is close to the colors and values of the original.

I know you've read the postings here, so thank you, Bill, for such a great week.

Whitaker Workshop #15

And here is the demonstration portrait of Alexandra at the end of the workshop. Although the chest, blouse and arms aren't quite complete, the face is nearly so. Notice the use of warms and cools. The white patch on the background has been painted into with a lovely blue, giving interest and liveliness.

Whitaker Workshop #14

Here is the demonstration portrait on Day 4.
You can see how Bill used a painting knife to add white to the background. In order to make lively backgrounds he often uses a black glaze or a patch of white into which he paints color. Notice that the edges are cleaner and more detail has been worked in. The patches of mosaic color are now more fused and blended.

Whitaker Workshop #13

Day 4 of the workshop. We begin as always with a continuation of Bill's demonstration painting of Alexandra.

In part because so many demonstrations seem to show how to begin but do not show how to finish, he continues this through the entire week. You can go as far as you like, he says, finding and correcting detail after detail. If you're the kind of painter who enjoys a more highly polished work, this is invaluable assistance.

Today he spent extra time on the background and also on edges. Making some edges harder and others much softer by painting background colors closer and closer helps. At this point, working on the facial details requires using smaller brushes, especially sables. With the background, he advocated using a black glaze to push it farther away then working paint back into the wet glaze to create a more lively effect.

As he did each day, Bill spoke while painting. A few things he suggested that we remember:

• Always set up a "home position" for observing and painting.
• Work standing. There is no better way. It is vital that you move.
• Never stop correcting the form.
• Use the lightest touch possible with your brush. You can layer wet into wet that way.
• If you make a mark, you have something to correct.

Today, small details are starting to come into focus on the painting.

Whitaker Workshop #12

Here is an intermediate step in my profile portrait. Although it's not obvious, there are now spots of brighter color (alongside the nose, on the cheekbone, the back of the neck) worked into the painting. Much of the subtlety of color is lost in digital photos, unfortunately. I've also corrected the drawing in a number of places. In addition, the pose is changed by dropping the model's shoulder and therefore giving her a more erect and graceful posture. The ear remains unfinished; there is much to do on the eyes and hair.

Whitaker Workshop #11

Reviewing the posts from yesterday I see that I neglected to add photos of the works in progress. Note that the portrait continues to progress as colors are added, bringing more and more coherence to the initial mosaic. Note that the background is beginning to coalesce as well.