Ok, what you are seeing that is dripping is a wash that used for the backround using the Mayer medium (5 parts turp, 1 part stand oil, 1 part Damar Varnish) and Transparent Oxide Red and Ultramarine Blue, and black... this gives you a DEEP, rick black in the background.
you saw a general tone i put over the face when i paint Alla Prima, I follow Richard Schmid's technique but I do more form building in the begining than he does. Mainly because he can get the form and the edges all in one stroke... he's a Master at age 70.... I have about 38 years to catch up to him.
T

Hi Tony
As you said you like to paint like Sargent does ,can you tell me if you use a hard brush at the biginning (as you can see in a Sargent's painting) and how you 've got the beautiful soft edge in "Geisha's painting" ?

"Geisha"'s painting

To get the soft edges in clothing or any soft transition, I follow what Sargent did, which was use a few transitional strokes of a middle value between your foreground element and your background, usually by bristle filbert, than move to a mongoose hair brush and soften some of the passages to get a real lost edge.

By the way, I have seen that Sargent that you posted. It taught me VOLUMES on his method. I think its for sale in a gallery in New York...

Hi Tony,

You are so nice and thoughtful!!

Thanks for the technical explanation. I'll post few Sargent' s paintings details and ask you some questions.

1)If Sargent didn't paint "alla prima" how did he make the hair's transparence you see on the right side of the picture?

2) you can see that the procedure takes a second time session

3) This picture seems to me to have been painted in more then one session... or not?
Feel free to answer me when you've got time. I'm retired and I 'm afraid to get a little obsessionated by Sargent 's painting.
Ciao
Adriano

I'd like to subscribe to this thread and follow along with some answers too. I so admire Sargeant's work. All these examples are absolutely stunning. Thanks for bringing up these questions Adriano and for sharing with us Tony.

Dianne

Hi Dianne
I'm very pleased to share everything I know about Sargent's technique.
That's why I asked Tony ,because I think he can explain to us how to proceed to get by half tones the planes and the volumes of a face.
Ciao Adriano

You should realize that Sargent painted as if he was painting alla prima. It was a long process but it was one that required painting wet into wet. So in effect, he was painting alla prima. His transparent passages came from using thins paint diluted with linseed oil.

One of the best ways to see how Sargent painted or similar to how Sargent painted is to get the book Painting a Potrait by Phillip de Laszlo, as interviewed by A.L. Baldry. De Laszlo was Sargent's predecessor as to being the portrait painter of English Royalty.
He was about 15 years younger than Sargent, and it is rumored that they had shared painting ideas together and maybe even painted together, although its hard to say. de Laszlo certainly studied the same methods as Sargent and he painted the same people, just 10 years later.
It's the closest thing to an instructional that I have found to how Sargent painted WITH DESCRIPTIVE PICTURES! An amazing treasure... if you can find one! It is on teh internet though for online viewing but the actual book is great as there is a REAL Windsor Newton swatch of his palette in the book. Fantastic!
Tony :thumbsup: