When is a Painting Done?

My daughter posed for the portrait group on Friday. You'd think I'd know her face very well but in the process of studying her face while painting in pastels I was reminded of just how pretty she can be. Of course she's not so pretty when I'm nagging her to do something. :o)

I could have quit after the first 20 minutes with a satisfactory sketch but I wanted to try modeling the face more. Sometimes I start off really strong and then end up over working a piece and wrecking it.  In fact I've done this so often that people will tell me, "stop and start another one before you over work it".

There's something to be said for the quick sketch, though 20 minutes is hardly all that quick.

This photo of the first 20 was taken inside without a tripod so the whites are dark but you can see how I start a portrait. I tend to do it traditionally by making small marks for the top, then the chin, and how much of the neck and body I want to show. Always aware of how I want it to fit inside the first lines of the page borders. Next I mark where the eyes sit, then nose, mouth, and general shape of the head and hair.

I have to remind myself that the eyes tend to sit right in the middle of the head.  Then everything is a half way distance from there on down. Nose half way between eyes,  mouth half way between nose and chin. This is a formula that works fairly well as long as one continually eyeballs if features are a bit higher or lower.

Most of what I look for are basic negative and positive shapes. As I model I look for similar planes and how the light falls on them.

How do I know when I'm done? Usually when I get bored with it or run out of time. When painting gets tedious it becomes work and unless someone is paying for something more finished I rarely take it as far as I feel it could go.  What I need to remind myself to do is keep things simple and not tighten up on every detail. Details can be nice but they can detract from the whole. The design of shapes and the way light hits them are the most important things for me. Things I'm still trying to master.

I tend to like the vitality that looser paintings have. IMHO, I can render with the best of them. But who wants to paint a photograph? These days I find myself wincing if someone says one of my paintings looks like a photograph. Hey if you consider photographic looking art to be the hallmark of great art then why not just frame a photo? Right?

Photography and Painting are representations of reality not actual reality. Is one a better representation of reality?  Which better expresses the artist's vision of what they are trying to portray? Both are crafts that require a certain amount of skill and I love both mediums.  It's easier for me to say when a photo is done than a painting. Very rarely do I take a photo and find it needs no further fine tuning. Sometimes I have to combine several exposures of the same shot to get it the way I experienced it.

Painting takes much more time to get to something I consider close to complete. Especially working in acrylics. If I'm doing a digital painting it goes much faster because I have the undo and history buttons. Plus there's all those layers one can experiment with. Experimenting is something I need to bring back to my painting.

Art seems more alive when you can see the artist's strokes. So though I consider myself a realist I don't hold photographic representation as the ideal. Personally I'd much rather gaze and a John Singer Sargent painting than a Richard Avedon photo. Both are masters and I'm a huge fan of both. I just tend to prefer painters. Prints tend to distance the artist from the medium where as painting you really feel ans see the artist's touch.

Pastel of Wayne as a Pirate

So when is a painting done? Usually when I get tired of working on it. Anything that takes longer than a day get's tedious. But , , ,  that doesn't mean I think they can't be improved. I'm constantly reworking older paintings. The reality is nothing is ever going to be perfect. But some times I'll see things I'd like to do to a painting to improve it. Sometimes I ruin it by over experimenting. Sometimes I paint over such paintings because I need a fresh canvas and am out.

The important thing is to enjoy what we do in life and art. I'm relearning the joy of making art and even when someone commissions a piece I try to keep it fun. The challenge of creating something from nothing is always rewarding. Not always easy but then if it was easy it wouldn't be as rewarding.

I've got a lot of landscapes I'm anxious to share but have held back because I don't feel they are where I want them to be. When they become tedious I start a fresh one or go out looking for new inspiration. It's that beginning process when everything is fresh that I enjoy the most. It's that freshness and vitality I admire in the masters that I want in my art. It's the rendering that tends to kill it for me. One day I'll figure it out.

Frustration with Faces

Last couple sessions with the portrait group I've been feeling very frustrated with my pastel sketches. I like pastels because their much faster when working from life but their also quite messy. Having lost my main boxes of portrait pastels I've had to resort to a jumble box of broken bits where you can't tell what color they are until you wipe them off. If you don't wipe them off real good you can wind up making a dark mark where you hoping for a light one.

So that's frustrating but sometimes I just feel like I'm not really getting the pose or likeness. Sometimes I don't care about the likeness as much as the feeling.

Last Friday we had one of my favorite models Cheyenne. A lovely beauty who reminds of an indian princess. Yet her peasant blouse put me in mind of a pretty senorita. So that is how I drew her. Here's two drawings from the same angle. Just approaching the lay in a bit different.

The one on the left is the first one with a more traditional drawing lay in. The one on the right I focused more on the color shapes avoiding any drawing till the end. I tried using blue and green mixed into the shadows to compliment all the lighter gold skin colors.

Headdress

We had a Cowboy with a mustache wearing a indian chief headress. Never saw an indian with a mustache so I drew him without it. It was one of those rare times I preferred moving to a profile postion. Normally I strive to get a likeness but this time I made the features fit more in the guise of an indian chief.

The second sketch I was able to move over a bit for a slight 3/4 view. The costume didn't quite seem right on the model. I would have preferred him as a cowboy or in his civil war outfit.

A Fun Filled Friday 8-12

It was a good Friday. It started with the YWA painting group which is always something to look forward to. Our scheduled model didn't show but we got lucky when one of our fellow painters and friend Mary Jane Brewster agreed to be the model.

This first sketch shows how I often do a lay in with pastels. Usually starting with some kind of background color. Not always the one that is there. This one happened to be pink and it suited her. Sometimes I leave it white but that can be pretty hard to keep clean with pastels. Having a color there makes it easier to start blocking light shapes in at the same time as the darks.

Mary Jane and I have painted together many times. She even did a painting of me that is in my profile picks. This is the first time I've had the pleasure of painting her. This isn't a great likeness of her but I like to think I captured her determined spirit and strength. She is really one of the most remarkable woman I've ever known. Lucky to be able to call her a good friend.

Five of us were out to lunch after the painting session when Nancy Robbins called to see if anyone wanted to go with her on a hike to see the Indian Arch Rock at sunset in Yosemite. I wasn't sure hiking the 3 miles back out at night was in me but I'd never been there. Fortunately I had my day pack, head lamp, and hiking shoes in my car.  After getting the affirmative from my painting pals that such a hike was a bit crazy I decided I'm just crazy enough to enjoy this.

So I met Nancy at Wawona and she drove us all the way to Porcupine Flat by way of the Tioga road.  It was one of those spur of the moment adventures that makes life exciting.  Nancy is an accomplished photographer and I know I'm going to get some great picks when I go hiking with her.

Of course keeping up with her is another matter altogether.  Even with her bad wrist, shoulder, and a heavy pack full of camera gear she leaves me winded trying to keep up.

It was a bit of a race with the sun to try and get there with the moon just rising and good light.  Nancy was already at the Indian Arch when I stopped for a breather and looked back in surprise to see Half Dome glowing across the valley.

With the sun quickly setting I had to pick up my pace if  I was going to see the arch by sunset. As you can see from these shots It was well worth it.  The light was changing fast and I don't know where the colorful clouds came from but I was one happy hiker to see them. I was up the back side of the Arch just in time to catch these amazing sunset clouds.

After climbing up on a huge boulder I was able to get this shot of a Ponderosa pine framed by the arch.

I didn't want to leave but it was getting dark and the hill down was quite slippery with small gravel acting like ball bearings on hard granite.

It was a long walk back with our head lamps on but we took it nice and leisurely.  It was a hike I hope to do again. I'm lucky to have such wonderful inspiring friends.

Ophelia

Ophelia, now there is a name or subject that has been the muse for many an artist. Last Friday we had one of our local Ophelia's pose for us again. A beautiful woman who once toured with the Beachboys as a hula dancer.

I have to admit to being quite self conscious about rendering her breasts with her husband in the room. When I'm studying form no matter what it is I tend to feel it in my mind. Paint a rock or an apple and you become very aware of the texture and shape.

Some of the women in the group pointed out that the male born artists were all focusing on the model's breasts. Which only points out that they were quite aware of them as well. So why not paint them?  Is it because the breasts that fed us a babies have become associated with sex appeal in our culture?

 Maybe men will like this portrait and women will find it as objectifying women as sex objects. Are such portraits to be avoided?

Here's a portrait of the same model from last year. Now I could have just focused on the face on that one as well yet the gown was interesting. Same model radically different looks. Not what you'd call sexy. The top one is the type of image you might see in advertising selling and expensive liquor. Not something you'd associate with fine art.

In art history Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet was a favorite subject of the realists. My favorite of the many renditions was this one by John Everett Millais. I had the pleasure of see this amazing painting may years back at the Tate museum in London. It was absolutely mind boggling.