I just finished a six portrait commission I began working on last year. Each painting is 16 x 20 Oil on Linen. These are quick studies, which is why the backgrounds are unfinished. It was also the first time I painted anyone that young. I had a lot of fun doing these and am actually looking forward to the chance to paint more like them. The client, who not long after we started, I quickly could call a friend, was an absolute pleasure to work with! It makes the work so much easier and fun to work on.
There are photos circulating on the internet of before and after shots of artist's work from ten and twenty years ago, and this amazing transformation to their work today. The problem is that the drawings of the before shots are horrible, and most of the after shots look either traced or made with a grid. In almost all of the examples, there isn't much difference in the knowledge, just the skill.
I did the drawing to the right about fifteen years ago, roughly three or four years before I began working with Daniel Greene. Although it has many flaws, I think it shows a certain amount of knowledge and skill. It isn't downright awful (if I do say so myself). It was drawn from life in a three hour session at The National Arts Club in NYC. I clearly remember the day. Still in art school at the time, and somewhat nervous about even being there, I was minding my own business and drawing. A very famous pastel painter happened to be there. He walked by me and said "It looks like you swallowed a Dean Cornwell book." I think he meant it as an insult but I just looked up and said thank you. To me it was a compliment!
When I was young I tried a lot of different mediums and styles. I did several cartoon drawings in colored pencil like this one to the left. I miss doing these sometimes. I really enjoy working out of my head once in a while. I could easily have posted hundreds of terrible drawings from that time and say "look how much better I am now!" I don't think there are many cases where artists have absolutely no skill when they are young. Most working artists today that I know personally, actually had a tremendous amount of skill when they were young. I am not posting this to discourage young people who want to be painters, I am posting this because I believe the article to be a misrepresentation. Basically, all the article says is "If you copy enough photos, eventually you will get better at it"
Most people in a career, whether it be singers, dancers, athletes, etc, display an aptitude for these gifts at a very young age. Now I am certainly not saying that you are born with it and that's it. The same artists I mentioned above that displayed skill at a young age, also paint for ten to twelve hours a day if not more, myself included. But they had something there to begin with.
Before I began painting in oil, I worked in colored pencil, even on figurative work. In fact, when I began painting, I toned my canvas to the same color as my charcoal papers, and used only four colors on my palette, White, Burnt Umber, Yellow Ochre, and Terra Rosa, which matched the four colored pencils I favored most.
A quick Pen and Ink sketch done from life on the streets of France. So much fun drawing on the street there! I spent six months living in France when I was younger.
One of my first jobs was a Dragon I created for a dentist in Seattle. I made enough to pay for the trip. Below is a shot of the dragon. One of my very first oil paintings actually also.
Well, I hope everyone enjoyed me embarrassing myself with old work just to prove a point! Be careful of what you read on the internet, too much of it is just plain wrong...
This is a commission I just finished for a great friend and collector of my work. When you are starting out, if you are lucky, your friends buy your work. As you get older, the people who buy your work become friends. Not everyone who buys a painting becomes a friend. Everyone is different. Some people buy a painting or two and you never hear from them again, others I talk to all of the time, usually through Facebook. It's one of the best aspects of this business is all of the great people I get to meet! This is number five of six grandchildren I have been commissioned to paint.
This is a 16 x 20 portrait study. My favorite portraits to paint are two and three day studies. This painting was finished in three days. Actually it was supposed to be a two day portrait, but like I said, she's a good friend...
The drawing was done with a brush, and completed in about an hour and a half, maybe two hours. Because she was three years old, I had to do this one from a photo, but I still did the drawing freehand with the photo next to me and pretended she was sitting there. She couldn't hold still long enough to take her picture, so painting from life was out the window! I took over four hundred photos, and used a combination of three on this painting. In the shot this pose was in, she wasn't smiling, so I had to add the slight smile from another photo.
Every time I teach a class I start with the same lecture of how important it is to learn portrait painting step by step. I'm sure there are people out there who put out a full palette of paint and learned to paint portraits without doing black and white paintings first, but I would say that they are in the minority.
I have personally seen classes where an instructor recommended 25 colors on the palette and the class was full of brightly colored disasters.
The most common comment I get from a new student who is struggling is "I'm having a problem with color". Then they begin working and I quickly find out that they can't draw and they don't understand values.
I did the above painting in a Daniel Greene Workshop several years ago. The model had been posing all week and I couldn't get it right. On Friday I just decided to start over and try something else. I did this Black and White in two hours and was far more happy with it then the one I struggled with for four days.
Before I started oil painting portraits, I spent some time drawing portraits, which is always a good idea. This one is done in Warm Grey and White Prismacolor pencil on Charcoal Paper. Read books on portrait painting as well. I will be posting a blog on some of my favorite portrait painting books soon.
I would say the hardest thing about learning to paint is figuring out exactly what the paint is going to do. I always suggest going back one step until painting gets easy. If you are working in full color and are not satisfied, work in black and white. If you are now making new disasters in black and white paint, I would suggest drawing for a while.
If you get to be an excellent portrait artist who works in charcoal on paper, I guarantee you will learn oil painting ten times faster!
When I say black and white, It really means just two colors, one color and white .
The above was done in raw umber and Holbein's Foundation Umber. It makes for a softer more sepia colored value study. When I began using color I didn't jump from B/W to a 25 color palette. I added them one or two at a time. My first color palette was Burnt Umber, Yellow Ochre, Terra Rosa, Black and White. I then added one color a month until I hit twelve colors and then stopped for a while.
This one was done in six hours as a demo for a workshop I taught in Australia. A student was nice enough to film it and put a short video of it on YouTube.
I'm off to Florida for the next four months. Then Australia, and finally in the North West of the US......and I just have too many paintings to keep all of them. Here are a few that I have up for auction right now....more to come!!!!
This is a portrait of the great Randy. I first met Randy in 2003, my first year as an assistant to Daniel Greene during his summer workshops. Randy is absolutely the most amazing (if not the prettiest) model I have ever worked with. He can hold perfectly still the entire time and almost always gets back into the same pose without needing to be corrected. It's interesting for me because I normally talk to my models while I am painting and expect them to move a bit.
This Renaissance costume is one of my favorite outfits Randy has. The painting took eight 3-hour sittings. It is 24 x 28, Oil on Linen, 2006.
Whenever painting in a group environment most people rush to the center of the room like they are on line at the deli counter and a prize awaits them in the middle. I take a number and get out of the way and use the same line of thinking when painting with others. I've already seen artists with their backs up against the far wall of a classroom and yet the sides and profile positions are empty. Take a number, get out of the way.... and so I choose the sides or the profile positions. (I like the corners in restaurants too, I can see more of whats going on.)
Now the choice is which side. Usually, if the monitor of the open studio has a half a brain (don't assume they do) the model will be looking forward and the light will be off slightly to one side. Why? So that everyone in the room gets at least a profile. If the model is looking to her left or right then everyone on the other side will be painting the back of the models head. And as for clever lighting arrangements, and difficult drapery backgrounds........If there were a different model each week, but you set them up in the same pose with the same background, most of the artists in the room would still struggle. Painting from life is hard enough....I don't need to make it harder...But back to the point.
Based on that lighting set up there should be a light side and a dark side. I choose whichever is most interesting to me that day. The painting above is a typical example of the shadow side. This is a two hour study done in Raw Umber and Foundation Umber which is a creamy off-white. When working on the shadow side I quickly try to mass in the darks and then go after the "bands or strips of value" trying not to blend. It is a great exercise to place the right values in the right places in one or two strokes. I place the deepest darks first and then slowly work my way up to the lightest lights. This painting of Alex was painted from the light side. When working on the light side you usually see more color and less value. I like to paint these with almost the same approach. I still start with the deepest dark and work my way up, but now I have to concentrate on the different colors I see. I try to use color without overstating it. "A touch of purple", a greenish color, a hint of red in the cheeks". I try to avoid bold colors out of the tube because I don't usually see them on a persons face. (Actually I did see it once when a student of mine fell asleep on his palette and didn't realize it.) This painting above is a mixture of the two. It was painted on the shadow side, in full color. Nothing changes in approach. I still use the "bands of color and value". When I put down the deepest dark first i leave it on my palette. I look for the color one value lighter than what I put down and place it next to it on the palette. If it is lighter on the palette it will be lighter on the painting. I keep doing that using the palette as a guide, testing my strokes on the palette before placing them on the canvas. Of course there may have to be adjustments along the way. Things I missed, errors, etc. I just go back to that area, make the necessary corrections and move on. The above painting was a three hour study, although I spent too much of that time on the hat. I titled it "Green Hat" for obvious reasons. Yes, when I was very young I had a stuffed bear named......."Bear"... sue me. "Sepia Study" 16 x 20 Oil on Canvas 2008 "Alex" 16 x 20 Oil on Canvas 2009 "Green Hat" 20 x 24 Oil on Canvas 2007.
Hello again folks, This was a drawing demo I had done for an article in American Artist Magazine. I had also done a full color painting demo which the magazine thought looked more finished. I still think this is a fine example of how I begin each portrait. This was painted from life in one 3-Hour sitting.
I begin with just a few strokes to indicate the placement of the head. I don't ever want it to get too big or too small. This is a gesture drawing, very light, to indicate movement and get a feeling of where things will go.
After I get a general placement I begin to work on the eyes and nose first. I use plenty of plumb lines to check angles. At this point I don't measure. If I need to measure (as in with my thumb on the end of the brush) I do so only to check if there is a mistake. If you begin your work by measuring, you rely to heavily on it and are not training your eyes to see. I feel that getting the diagnal angle from the outside corner of the nose to the outside corner of the eye accurate is on of the most important elements of a portrait.
As I move through the painting my detail gets sharper, my paint gets darker and I try to be increasingly accurate. At this point the drawing does not have to look exactly like the model but it should be close. As the drawing gets covered with paint it may need to be re-drawn several times so there is some room for error....but not too much.
I always look at the drawing to be my "map" for the rest of the painting. The more accurate it is, the easier it should be to make the painting and the faster it will go. If the eyes are too low in the beginig drawing at it takes two weeks before you realize it, well that will slow you down a bit.
When I feel the drawing is complete, I add the brightest highlights in pure white. I paint them thinly because I will be going over them later with more paint. I put them in because I feel that it help me gauge the likeness and the feeling of the overall picture. If it feels right now it should feel right later.
Each painting I make begins with a drawing. I draw with the brush, directly onto a toned canvas. Most of the time I use a mixture of Burnt Umber and White. I will do several drawings, one over the other, so the first drawing must be done in a value just slightly darker than my canvas. I then make progressively darker drawings until I feel that the drawing is accurate enough to continue.If I know in advance I have several sittings on a portrait, I will stop when the drawing is complete and let the painting dry. If I make a mistake in painting on the second sitting I can simply wipe off the paint and my dry drawing is still underneath.
With a still-life I try to put in as much information as possible. The better the drawing the easier it is to make the painting. I always add "I've never made a drawing better by filling it in with paint".....It's still my favorite part of the process.
If I know in advance I have several sittings on a portrait, I will stop when the drawing is complete and let the painting dry. If I make a mistake in painting on the second sitting I can simply wipe off the paint and my dry drawing is still underneath.
With a still-life I try to put in as much information as possible. The better the drawing the easier it is to make the painting..jpg)