Jane and Iona
 

This is hot off my easel. I began planning this months ago. It seemed only half done yesterday, but by 2PM today it was delivered. Yes, I was up all night painting.

"Jane and Iona", oil on linen, 31 inches by 34 inches.

The dog was posed on a foot stool beside the armchair.

Dear Garth,

This is a stunning and masterful work. I am just floored by your sensitive and intelligent portrayal of this older woman, and your decisions as to value, color and paint handling show flawless taste and unimpeachable technique.

I'm sorry for all these flowery superlatives, but I'm just searching for words at the keyboard. Here's what I really want to say: I wish I painted this painting.

Gosh - this is just beautiful! Can you post some close-ups of her hands and some background parts - I am interested in seeing how tight the background is up close.

Garth,

This is masterful and so inspiring to look at. Your control of values...... how do you do that?
I also like the pastel color harmony, that unifies this very complex composition.

Keep up the good work, Allan.

This is gorgeous and amazing, Garth!

Thanks Linda, Kimberly, Allan, and Cynthia:

I am heading out the door for another client, but I wanted to quickly thank you all for your praise and encouraging comments. I should be back on Sunday.

Dear Linda thanks, I am overwhelmed. It would have been great to have you paint Jane!

Kimberly, I have a shot of the background detail but it has a lot of glare. Basicly, it is a slightly blurred impression, with minimal detail. Nothing is sharp, just soft edges.

Allan, I came up with a new way on this painting to control values, with a 52 level gray index (in paint). The nice thing is that I can now lay down any color inthe painting (as long as it is not too wet in consistency) and know that the value is right where I need it to be. This way fewer corrections or adjustments are needed.

Thanks Cynthia, your praise makes my day!

Garth

I'm floored Garth! You've raised the bar once again on ultra-realistic paintings. The lipstick and painted nails are perfect touches. Did you do this from life or photos or a combination of both? This is a beautiful painting.

Holly

WOW, Garth!!

I absolutely LOVE this forum. I get such a creative boost when I see what everyone is doing.

Thanks for the BLAST, Garth.

Janel

Student held spellbound!
 

Captivating! Stunningly beautiful, elegant, so eye pleasing I want to look and look. . .

Wonderful
 

Garth,

I loved your formal portraits, but I think this is even more magnificent. Can you elaborate about your technique you mentioned?

I agree with Holly - you definitely raise the bar - You give so much life to the people you paint.

Jane

Dear Garth,

I will have to get onto threads earlier, since I am at a loss to come up with new adjectives. This portrait is really extraordinary. Bravo!

Wow!!!
 

Garth,

I am speechless! And amazed! What a beautiful and sensitive portrait. I can't imagine how you did that! I hope you'll share something about your technique. I'm 'stuck' on warm and cool theory right now, I certainly would love to hear anything you have to offer about how you handle warm and cool tones to get such . . . such real looking breathing people!

Thank you,

Joan

Simply mind blowing. Wow!

Perfection. Thanks for sharing this with us.

I want that doggie!
 

Garth,

Simply exquisite.

WOW
Garth, it is simply breathtaking, when can we get YOU to give a workshop?

Wow Garth - Another one that's just awe-inspiring!
Beautiful color.

Garth, this is so beautifully done that it is hard to believe it's a painting till you look very close. She is breathing! Her clothing is a lovely compiment to her face and hair and is so soft. I like everything about this portrait, and will study it often to learn as much as I can from it.

Jean

Your best painting to date. Congrats!

OMG,

I know that we are not supposed to use anachronyms or abbreviations, etc. but OMG is all I can say - this is all of the above (especially Linda Brandon's statements!) and more. I love the colors, the dog is absolutely precious and the woman elegantly handled. I hope I can make my mom look this fabulous as I try to paint her very soon.

What a treat to see this beautiful painting, Garth!

Denise

Dear Holly, Janel, Patricia, Jane, Chris, Joan, Michele, Josef, Sharon, Mary, Terri, Jean, Marvin, and Denise,

Thank you all so much for your kind praise and encouraging responses! I feel a great debt of gratitude to you all, and your superlative reactions to my painting are a hard act to follow. With all the struggle and challenge I felt I was facing with this painting along with endless revisions and a seemingly unrealistic deadline, I feel truly honored that it is being received so well here, and humbled by all your collective accomplishments as well. On Friday, it was heartily received at a public unveiling in Reading, Pennsylvania, where Governor Ed Rendell and the First Lady, Midge Rendell were able to view it (although I was in Massachusetts at the time attending as a dinner guest at Edith Wharton's home and estate; what a life!). By the way, Jane's family readily shared their approval of it too on Friday!

The fact that you are all so approving is all the more amazing to me when I consider where I was with this painting just twenty-four hours before I delivered it, last Thursday. I am not sure how I did this, myself. The painting was in a state of considerable transition and revision. with a number of major corrections prospectively mapped out in hatches and dashes. The background was pretty much fine, but I ended up repainting all of Jane and Iona (face, suit, hands, scarf, skirt, dog, and more) in the intervening twenty-four hour period, without any breaks (I did not know this was possible to do at such a frenetic pace). What mainly made it possible to pull this off was being able to be absolutely certain that the paint values were exactly where I needed them to be. Once the paint was applied, I made virtually no value adjustments or corrections.

How my system of painting works is complex, and involves (currently) a 52 level gray scale I developed and carefully calibrated over many months of trial and error. This gray scale is archived in individual tubes of paint, from which I have painted small hand held reference scales for value comparison and analysis. Basically I can see in a fleeting glance if any value in the painting needs to be even subtly adjusted, even before everything is placed and indicated, in order to fit with the intended grand scheme of the painting. This gray scale is precisely calibrated with the Lab Color scale used in the reference image in Photoshop. I also have calibrated my printer to produce prints in precisely the value, hue and chroma I intend to paint; so a few handy reference prints really helped out too. The Photoshop reference, the reference prints, the 52-level gray scale and the painting are all simultaneously in perfect calibrated agreement. This does not mean it is better to paint this way than from life. Hardly! But the reality of commuting a great distance for every sitting, and even then being very limited with available scheduling, somewhat dictated a different, more comprehensive approach to finishing this portrait.

Initially I painted much of this painting directly from live sittings, however I found it challenging to maintain Jane's (not to mention Iona's) focus and attention. We did have some wonderful conversations though, after we discovered we hailed from the same neighborhood. This did immensely influence the outcome of this painting, but ultimately I relied mostly on the reference photograph to finish it. In the last hours, I found myself mainly adhering to an alla-prima handling of the paint, melding every transition together wet into wet, until it looked resolved (or resolved enough). Had there been more time alloted, I would have striven for perfection, but I am pretty happy with the finish as it turned out, last Thursday.

Jane gets all the credit for the color scheme, as she selected her own outfit. I was thrilled with this composition from the beginning. I shot several hundred reference photo variations, and out of them all this one really stood out for Jane's family and I. In the color development of this painting, I did not put any thought into rules about arranging warm against cool, or anything else, because I wanted to see this image objectively. The color development simply evolved naturally from observation.

Actually I am not sure what else to add here. I probably have rambled on too long already. I really appreciate the strong support and response from all of you. It feels great!

Thanks again,

Garth

This is a fantastic painting and I second every other adjective used here! And if your painting was not impressive enough.... Wow! I've tubed a paltry 9 values for 4 colors so I know how time consuming tubing is, so I can't imagine the amount of time and work you have put into your palette. I am impressed--not only by the quality and sensitivity of the painting, but also by the work ethic behind it. Magnificent!

Renee Price

Dear Renee,

Thanks! I think it is fantastic that you have tubed 9 values for four colors! I never did that; I merely created a referencing system to tell me where to mix and place my values. By the way, which four colors did you process into 9 values?

Garth

Dear Garth,

I mixed 9 values of neutral (ivory black, raw umber, & flake white), 9 values of yellow ochre (adding raw umber to darken values), 9 values of red ochre & 9 values of Indian Red (adding ivory black to darken and flake white to lighten). It took several days to tube them all, but it's so much easier to squeeze out only what I need. Later I added ultramarine in values 5, 6, & 7, and asphaltum in values 1, 2, & 3.

I would love to know more about the referencing system you developed. All those values! Wow! What colors did you use?

Again, your painting is excellent!

Renee

And Garth gets the Gold Medal in my opinion.

As a student I don't understand the tubing and 52 gray scale bit explanation, but hopefully this will be explained in more detail soon so students like myself can appreciate soulful paintings like this even more than WOW!. To me the composition and, and, and, ..................WOW! Thanks for logging on Garth.

Garth, I wanted to ask you a question about your choice of background. It seems so informal and like a genuine slice of her life. I asume this was a conscious choice. Was it something you, the subject or the people who commissioned it asked for? It's so different from the formal, or at least, highly "arranged" backgrounds I see in almost all other commissioned portraits.

Renee,

You are amazing to have mixed and tubed so many colors you can really use in a portrait! What I simply did was mix proportions of Ivory Black and Titanium White (both Old Holland, the Titanium white is pure titanium, no zinc) merely for the purpose of value comparison. I am not painting with these grays, well not much. They are rather cold grays. I found that the particular black and white I used had about as close to equal tinting strength relative to each other as it probably gets, which was great for keeping track of proportions. For this equality it was important that there was no zinc presence in the white. Some day it would be nice to catch up to you and have some colors ready-tubed in nine values, or so.

Garth

Hi Ngaire,

Thanks! Your compliment is way too much, I think; but I had a good chuckle.

I work quite a lot from digital images in my computer as painting references. However, I find it difficult and tricky to paint directly from my computer monitor, as a reference next to my easel. It is hard to judge values from an image composed of light, and translate this into an image composed of pigments. I am trying to bridge this gap with my numerical value index referencing system as a guide.

I use Photoshop which has some great tools. In Photoshop there is an Info Box that will tell you a numerical formula for the precise color the cursor is positioned upon. As the cursor is moved to a new spot, new numbers will be presented. Instead of the commonplace RGB mode, I use Lab as the image mode, because Lab has a number representing the value of the color in the formula. The value scale in Lab runs from 100 representing pure white, to 0, representing pure black. Essentially this is an 101 level gray scale built into Photoshop.

I mixed 50 mostly evenly dispersed gray values in paint, which have been assigned numerical values to relate to the Lab scale in Photoshop. From this I have painted handy reference charts to translate and compare values as I paint. If the cursor points to a shadow in the digital reference, and the info box indicates a Lab value of 37, I can rotate my handy value index to the paint chip closest to value 37, and compare that to the color I have applied or am about to apply to the corresponding shadow in the painting. This way I can quickly see if it needs to be darker or lighter, or if I happened to get it right on the first try, with simple observation.

In a nutshell, this is what my 52 tubes (including black and white) of gray are all about. I hope this helps to answer your question.

Regards,

Garth

Hi Michele,

Actually the background was not much discussed with the client. I simply painted what was already there. Some of the item happened to have much personal significance to the client, so it was satisfying that they were included in an incidental way. All that was changed from the reference image was Jane's ring on her finger, and the removal of my totally incongruent Gitzo tripod, which was lurking uninvited in the background.

Here is the photo reference, and the painting beneath. So you can see I took the easy route and just painted what was there. I liked the composition from the beginning, so I just left it alone.

Garth

Garth,

Thank you for explaining your value method--it was a great 'light bulb' moment. You've done all that work and you want to catch up to me?? Haha! I'm playing catch up! :D

Renee

Wow Garth, talk about the color composition.

I didn't take time to read everyones accolades, but I am assuming you helped her with the wardrobe.

I put this one right up there with my other favorite, of the little guy at the swimming pool.

Just wonderful!

Garth,
This is just wonderful, everything everybody else said and more. One thing came to mind when I read your first statement though. You were up all night painting and delivered it the next day? Weren't you afraid of some accidental smudge? Little curious fingers?

Thanks, Renee, Elizabeth, and Marta for your kind words!

Renee: I still say you are unusually organized with your color mixing.

Elizabeth: Jane had a couple options ready to wear, but I liked what she had already chosen to wear first.

Marta: Good point! I had enough Liquin in my medium to prevent any real tackiness or smudge danger by the time of delivery. Right now I am not using any Liquin, just paint, and it still dries overnight, or so it seems.

Garth

Garth, another great one. I think I like this one the most of yours so far. (until the next one)

Dear Garth,

Let me re-enter this dialogue and comment on how your very precise edge mangement creates a breathable atmosphere between the viewer and the painter. I would, (and I think many others) like to hear your thoughts on this.

Best,

Thanks Jimmie and Chris,


Dear Chris,

What an interesting concept. I have not actually thought of this before; at least in verbal terms. Do you mean atmosphere between the viewer and the painting, or the painter? I am assuming it's the painting. It seems to make sense: if edges are crisp and sharp, they seem to penetrate the viewer's space more effectively than if they are soft and blurred. So I guess one could say there is a sense of a breathable atmosphere implied before some of my paintings. Very interesting! Thanks for articulating the idea. Now I will be thinking more consciously about this while painting.

Do you or anybody have more specific thoughts about this topic of the possible effect or illusion of atmospheric space?

Best,

Garth

Garth,

My apologies for the delay in getting back to you here..

Actually I was thinking about the relationship between the person viewing the painting, and the picture plane(s) of the painting. I think that your masterful execution of edges makes the series of many successive picture planes behave. I liken this to the notion of photographic "depth of field" but unleashed from what the camera would convey. Painters have to control their surfaces, and you have done this beautifully.

Gosh Chris,

This is high praise indeed! I think I closely followed the cues of my reference photo to guide me in my edge control. I was careful to keep colors in the background passages from being particularly strident and contrast levels reasonable. I think this might contribute to the effects akin to a photographic depth of field.

Thanks so much,

Garth

Top Ten Finalist!
 

Breaking News: Jane and Iona has been selected as a finalist at the Portrait Society of America Seventh Annual Art of the Portrait International Portrait Competition, May 12 - 15, 2005, in Washington, D.C.

Wish me luck! There is some good competition.

Garth

Congratulations Garth! and good luck - although you dont need it!