Thank you so much, Garth, for posting those super close shots. It's very helpful. (You can always recognize the artists at a museum. We're the ones who stand with our noses just millimeters from the canvases.)

Can you tell me how large a canvas area is represented by, for example, the first closeup of the boy's face?

Also, did you paint these subtle tonal variations by scumbling on top of dry paint?

Thanks again!

WOW Geary,

You should teach! Thanks so much for the excellent Bouguereau quote. I know so little about his thinking, but this quote certainly seems to shed light on his magic (Now if I only could find that Bouguereau catalogue that belongs to my wife). The subtle shifts of tone and color in his work are what I really admire.

And one more question, Garth:

Greek: apotheoun, to deify. Care to tell us the story behind the title?

Fabulous painting!

Now THAT's what a little boy without a shirt should look like when painted!

Thanks Terri, and Michele!

Terri: I think the painting comes together closer than 4 or 5 feet. It seems okay to me at 2 feet (but maybe I need glasses).

Michele: The figures are exactly life size in the painting, so the boy's head is also. I have had a long habit of working life size, but never larger. I guess this stems from my former practice of making life size standing cut-out portraits on birch panels (with the edges beveled back, like a traditional dummy-board of the 17th century).

I was in a hurry painting this so I was not particular about how wet the paint surface was when scumbled over. Often I strove for a wet into wet technique to maintain better control over subtle tone and value shifts, but after the wet surface had set up, I could work in a gently dragged scumble. Generally the paint was applied very sparingly, but this can be a fault, although it dries faster. If I was applying a carefully controlled velatura (which to me is like a glaze, and is very different from a scumble), then the under layer of paint should seem dry so that it will not be etched or lifted away with brushing and wiping manipulations.

Hope this helps!

Oh Garth... I really didn't mean to imply that it wasn't 'okay' at any distance, it's amazing, --rather was trying to get a sense of how far back you were needing to 'dance' to assess how well all those beautiful subtleties were working together as you painted?

(So sorry, I should've phrased the question more clearly the first time!)

Apotheoun
 

Oh Michele,

I was afraid that title topic would come up to haunt me. The painting from 10 years ago was "Apotheosis of the Chunnel" which was really a rather arbitrary and mindless title. I was reading about the completion of the English Channel Tunnel (Chunnel), and I visualized the stretched out boy bridging the edge of the pool to the edge of the grass, with his mother's legs completing the bridge. It seemed a metaphore for the Chunnel to me. When I was sculpting Leonardo da Vinci's Horse a few years earlier, Capt Dent (who financed the Horse) was always extolling the apotheosis of this and the apotheosis of that, and the word just grew on me. So I needed a different title for the new version of the painting and Apotheoun seemed to work because the paintings are related. I did not want a more descriptive tiltle like Mother (or Madonna) and Child. Besides, when we all paint our portraits, are we not deifying our subjects somewhat?

Hi Terri,

Your point is well taken, and I was not paying close attention to your intent. I do need to stand as far back as my cramped studio room will allow to see how all the compositional elements are coming together, or not. It is often helpful to leave the room and come back after a moment. Sometimes I will turn the painting all directions in a hand held mirror to see what's going on.

I don't know.... I think a comfortable viewing distance for display can be anything over four feet, or so.

Thanks Kimberly! (Although, probably everyone is unique; some people have more flesh and some have more bone).

This painting is so far beyond what I can grasp, yet I can't stop looking at every shot of it you have posted here and I keep rereading every comment and piece of this discussion. Being the pure novice, uneducated, beginner I stand in awe. I LOVE this painting and wish I could stand before it.

Thank you very much for posting this beautiful work and sharing your thoughts and your knowledge. There is so much to learn, and I am made hungrier by the quality of art here and the discussions which take place.