Sunday painting

I decided to tackle the beadboard wainscoting behind Emila on Sunday. I had, a while back, prepared the way by painting the shadows in with raw umber, so as to be able to see them through the gradient “dark white” coat. The wall is actually part of an island sink in Jenifer and Jeff’s kitchen, but for this painting I made it a little higher. I wanted Emila to be the main focus. The light is subtle and plays gently across the surface – the light sources are on either side, somewhat more warm on the left side and cooler on the right. More light at the top and darker, cooler at the bottom, except for some local brightening from the white floor tiles along the baseboard (due to the low light, these changes aren't evident in the photo - sorry!)

The greatest contrast is where the boards come together in the beading, with highlights and shadows. None of them are brighter than the white of Emilia’s sleeves. I used the dark white recipe I learned in James Aponovich’s class many years ago. It’s a great recipe adaptable to a variety of uses. Here it is:

Mix Windsor Newton titanium white with Rembrandt Naples yellow light until creamy (color, not consistency) then add Windsor Newton raw umber until putty colored. Add a small amount of Windsor Newton burnt Sienna to pinken it. Add a little Rembrandt cobalt blue light to subdue the pink. That’s the basic mixture. Add titanium white to lighten and Rembrandt Van Dyke brown to darken. I varied it for my painting, including adding some more cobalt blue mixed with Rembrandt phthalo turquoise to the Van Dyke brown for shades (to pick up the local color of Emilia’s clothing) and white mixed with Naples yellow light for tints.

I also used James’ technique for flawless gradients, using first a filbert bristle brush to apply the paint, then using the same brush in a figure-eight motion twice across the swath where the values overlap and change. Switching to the fan brush, I did the figure-eight thing through the mixed colors again twice. Finally I went over the surface again with the fan brush in a downward motion to smooth out the surface. If you try this, remember to wash and dry your brushes frequently, and work in one direction across the canvas. James uses this technique for his great skies. He starts at the bottom with the lighter colors and works his way up. For this painting, I’ve revised the technique for ambient light with multiple sources.

I’m not sure my background is quite right yet. I think I will need another coat. James is the only one I’ve ever seen who can do it right in one go. But I have seen him paint a sky gradient twice and it comes out luminous. I’ll be better able to tell when it’s dry. My values might be too subtle.

Did I say in an earlier post that it’s easier to paint children from photos? Here’s the catch – and one worth paying attention to – digital photography, toning and printing open up a ton of unwelcome variables in color and values. Nothing is as good as our eyes and brains for capturing color and value. Case in point: Ken’s photos were terrific, I toned them to my memory of the room and Emilia, but my Canon inkjet prints are a little on the cool side. And my mind’s eye sees the values slightly differently. So I’m not relying on the photos as much as my memory for my painting. And perhaps I should exaggerate the values a little more.

What’s next? I think I’ll be hopping to the socks and drumstick at the bottom of the canvas and the sleeve and doll’s pants on the left side of the painting. I need a little cleanup work here and there as well. When the background is dry, I’ll go back to it. And there’s the floor to finish. And maybe last of all, while the background is not quite dry, Emilia’s hair. Well, that’s the list so far, assuming I don’t mess something else up in the meantime.

Painting corduroy

I can't say I always know what colors to choose, especially the greens. So I gathered eleven likely tubes and proceeded to test them out. I've got a bit of the same #13 Claussens linen taped to a board for just this purpose. I put down a small square of pure color, right from the tube and next to it, a little mixed with white.

If you dabble about in oil colors you know that the transparency of various colors (and manufacturers) varies quite a bit. Greens are a case in point. The darkest varieties, viridian and phthalo are really quite transparent (you can see the canvas easily through them.) Whereas cadmiums are quite opaque, but much lighter in value.

I chose Windsor Newton cadmium green mixed with W.N. phthalo green for my base warm green and W.N. phthalo mixed with Williamsburg Veronese green for my cool green base. The base values are about 7 or 8 on a scale of 10 (with the darkest 10.) I darkened the warm base with W.N. indigo for a rich dark green, darker than black. I mixed up the lighter highlight colors, warm and cool, to a value of about 5 or 6 on that same scale. I used W.N. cadmium green pale and Sennelier permanent yellow green mixed with the warm base for the warm highlights and Veronese green and white mixed with the cool base for the cool highlights. Here's a color tip: If you ever need to cool a green, use a little bit of white – white cools green. Crazy, huh?

Here's the weird thing, I always find it hard to start. I also find it hard to stop. The trick is to do the prep work: study your subject to determine the values, I use a homemade value scale like they make you do in color theory; look for what's warm and what's cool; take a look at the texture, is it soft or hard, and fix it in your mind where you'll use soft and hard edges; mix a basic value range of colors. By then your warmed up and ready to put paint to the canvas.

I put in the darks first, thinly, around her waist and in the shadows on her legs. I used a small bristle brush, well trimmed to a nice edge, to mark the lines around her pockets and seams. I filled in the base colors and highlights alternately, scrubbing the paint on carefully, but not obsessing on detail, looking mostly to fill in the shapes and cover most of the pant area.

At this point I went over all the newly painted area with a soft fan brush, in a downward motion, to smooth the surface and soften the strokes. Then I took a soft, fat filbert and worked on correcting the values and color. My aim is to keep it soft so it looks like corduroy. I only put in a few details, fine shadowing and highlights where the surface of the fabric buckles on the pocket seams, the line of the zipper and the seam on the upturned portion of pants near her feet.

That's about all I accomplished, it was time to stop, as I was losing the light. I don't dare use artificial lighting on this painting, it would just really screw it up at this point. I still have to do some refining, like where her shirt meets her pants. I still need to work on her left sleeve and her dolly's pants as well, but I might tackle the background first.

New photos

Snoop and I took a long snowshoe this morning and by the time we got back, the sun was up and I was able to snap a couple of photos of the painting in natural light.

I've moved my easel and paints to the kitchen. There are several advantages to this: the lighting is spectacular; it's warm all the time and I don't need to start a fire and wait for everything to warm up; I see the painting all the time, so it's on my mind.

I'm working on a vertical 24- by 36-inch painting of my friend Jenifer VanPelt's little girl Emilia. She's four and takes that very seriously. It came about that I was on a photo shoot for one of our magazines that the paper puts out. It was our spring issue and we were doing maple recipes and Ken Williams was doing the photos. Ken enchants everyone he meets and Emila was no exception. She was walking around with her toys in her arms, half naked dolls, with and without hair and a little pink teddybear. I asked Ken to take some photos of her, straight on, full figure. I'm not usually a big proponent of painting from photos, but especially with kids, it's almost a necessity. I printed out the photos and got started in early summer. By August, I was going into surgery for my back so I didn't get much done until October. And now I've just started in again.

I worked on her sleeve and the front of her sweatshirt, all in turquoise. I had to look up the color mix from my notes. I don't give exact measurements, so there is always a little experimentation going on in order to match a painted section. (I used a combination of Rembrandt Pthalo Turquoise Blue, Williamson King's Blue, Windsor Newton Indigo, and for tints and shades, W.N. Titanium White and Rembrandt VanDyke Brown.) 

Another cool thing about painting in my kitchen is that I'm apt to glance over at it as I did this morning over coffee and noticed that I had forgotten to flatten the surface. Although the King's Blue dries fast (and also everything mixed into it), the surface was still damp enough to pull a fan brush over lightly to knock down the surface disturbance without marring the image.

I never used to pay attention to that sort of thing. But it's important, especially in a highly realistic representation. I learned that from all those years with James Aponovich. It's called getting rid of the distractions.