Attachment
 

I am going to try to post my attachment. Mike McCarty has been helping me with the technical aspects of this and I would have pulled out my hair without him by now. Thank you Mike. I think I did it.

Joan

Underpainting attempt
 

This is my first attempt at an underpainting from Sargent's 'Lady Agnew'. I am hoping for some input before I go to the next step, which will be glazing with burnt umber and Liquin (unless somebody tells me otherwise . . . . ). I would appreciate any comments.

Thanks,
Joan

Since this is a copy, it would be helpful if you posted the painting that you are copying from.

So far this looks OK, but could you post a larger detail of the face? On my screen I can't see any shading...it looks very flat. If your painting does indeed look like the posted picture...let us know and we'll go from there.

Underpaintings are supposed to be quite finished and detailed. At first glance, your values look OK....don't go any darker. Let's post some more pix here and then we'll go into more detail.

Cynthia: Could you move this whole thread to the Old Master Copies section?

Sargent's 'Lady Agnew'
 

Here is a photo of what I'm copying.
Joan

Close-up of underpainting
 

Thank you Karin for replying. I will attach a close up of the face. I can take criticism, it's the only way to learn.

Thanks,
Joan

Joan,

This is simply FYI, but Sargent worked alla prima, not with a grisaille and glazes. Lady Agnew is a masterpiece of virtuoso brush strokes. This doesn't mean that it is not possible to do a grisaille of this portrait, but it might be easier to copy a masterpiece that was painted in the style you are emulating.

I see in both this rendering and the painting I critiqued of your daughter Megan, that you are missing the shadow plane on the face. Your drawing is very good, but I see this flattening out of the face in both. It might be easier in the future to find a photograph, painting, or light a model from life where the shadow is very strong and very apparent to force yourself to see the planes of the head.

In fashion photography, the aim (seems to be....) to flatten out the planes and just show eyes, nostrils and mouth. The aim in portraiture is to show a three dimensional shape on a two dimensional surface, i.e., the planes of the head. Lady Agnew is front lighted, a very becoming and flattering lighting system, but there are still a more definite shadow shape on the right side of the nose and on the right side of the face, spilling over onto the neck and shoulder. This shadow shape is a middle value on the Sargent painting, and you've painted it as a light value.

Hope this helps.

Peggy

Peggy,

Thank you for your reply. I do realize that I am timid with my shadows. In the painting of Megan when I tried to darken the shadows I remember getting greens. That was before I discovered this forum and I have learned a lot about color since then.

I remember taking an art class and I was drawing in charcoal. The instructor came by my easel and took a piece of charcoal and absolutely blackened the eye sockets, trying to make a point that I needed to get much darker. Then she walked away. I have never forgotten that, it was a class I was taking while living in Holland and it was in Dutch so I'm sure I missed a lot. Though there wasn't much instruction at all in the way of talking.

I will concentrate on making things look rounded, more 3 dimensional. It's funny, I thought I was doing that, but obviously not enough. I have taken some photos of my children with a single light source and have chosen the best ones to work with next.

Thank you for taking the time to critique this attempt and the painting of Megan!!!

Joan

I disagree. In many of the paintings of Sargent that I have seen, he does indeed use an underpainting technique. It is just that he has so darn much "frosting" that it is difficult to see - unless you know what you're looking at.

For this reason Sargent is not really a good one to learn underpainting on. But when you are just starting out is is good to paint something that you like a lot.

Anyhow, Joan, without going any darker or lighter in value on the face, you need to really paint this with more refined detail. The eyes especially need attention and the whole face and figure need to look as if it is carved from marble.

You might use a picture of the original painting without color (xerox, Photoshop print, etc.). But be sure to keep your value range quite narrow at this stage.

"Whites" will appear quite dark, and darks will be much lighter that what you see. See the other thread on "underpainting."

Ah ha
 

I have read a lot on this forum about painting what one sees versus painting what one knows. I have painted from life in all my classes and just now have begun to paint from photographs. My instructor in Holland really turned her nose up at painting from photos. I have learned a lot since then!

As I was just thinking about values in painting, I am wondering if I should be painting the darks darker than I see them. I suppose that is probaby an impossible question to answer witout knowing what my reference material is. Hmmm, thought I would ask anyway.

I think I need to go to the museum and look for a poster of a better example to copy because, frustrated as I am, I am determined to learn how to paint using glazes.

Thanks,
Joan

NO - just the opposite. If you start out with dark dark areas there is no place to go....

By this I mean that if you are glazing color into shadow areas that are already dark, you end up with a really dark dead mud color at the end.

When you start out with the "dark" areas lighter than you intend them to be at the end....(we're talkin' relative here) there is plenty of "room" to add numerous glazes in pure color and thus deepen and enrich the final shadows without getting them too dark.

Attached is my underpainting copy of Mme. Ingres after an Ingres portrait. I never bothered to add color so you can see how I underpaint. Note that there are NO real darks here...and there are NO real lights here either.

Underpaintings are meant to be a very narrow range of values. In theorey, you are starting in the middle. You build light in the light areas and they get lighter. You also glaze and the shadows get darker and more luminous.

I hope that you are not thoroughly confused by now. A good artist to copy is Vermeer....I think that he teaches the clearest lesson.

Another thought. Copying the portrait of Lady Agnew is a subject of a "how to" video I used to own. It was by a "famous "portrait artist...I forget who. Anyhow, he demonstrated how he did the copy a la prima. I thought the result was not at all successful. His copy barely resembled the Sargent painting he was trying to copy.

Dang. I wish I still had that video.

Joan,

So as not confuse you further, I want to clarify something. After spending some time studying grisaille with Karin Wells in New Hampshire, one thing became clear. Painting in grisaille is exactly the opposite as painting alla prima. They are so far opposite that they become both sides of the same coin. (I remember telling Karin this on a park bench after the workshop ended...). The advise I gave you about establishing your value immediately was if you are painting alla prima. That advise was for your daughter Megan's portrait. In the grisaille painting of Lady Agnew, Karin is the master and I humbly bow to her expertise.

Peggy
.

Thanks Peggy - you really said it well. Grisaille really is the opposite of an a la prima in many ways. It gets even more confusing when an artist combines the two methods.

That is, Sargent oftentimes (not always!) did an underpainting and then did an a la prima in selected areas on top. Because of this, he is tough to copy unless you know and can apply both methods of painting.

Lady Agnew is a lovely painting but I'd be surprised if more than a handful of people could successfully copy it.

Steps
 

I suppose I'm feeling a bit better since the painting I chose to copy is so hard that it can hardly be done succesfully by anyone. But it also feels like somewhat of a wrong step in this learning process. That's one thing about art, there isn't a list of things to do and at the end you're an artist. I know that.

I like painting alla prima but am intrigued by the grisaille method and like the way those results look. All I can do is learn that and then see which method works best for me. I do feel like I'm back in school again, trying to figure this out.

I have decided to get a better example of an old master's grisaille to copy. And at the same time work on painting from photos of my kids, using the grisaille method.

I will put more detail in the face of 'Lady Agnew' and continue with glazes, I'll learn a lot I'm sure.

Thank you both Peggy and Karin for your help, any suggestions for steps I should be taking will be welcomed.

Thanks,
Joan

Up until the 1800's or so, many portrait painters of the old school traditions underpainted the face and hands of the sitter and then painted the rest of the picture a la prima.

Currently I am useing a traditional grisaille on the face and hands but use a shortcut method of underpainting on the rest that approaches (but isn't really) a la prima.

I believe that there are no rigid "rights or wrongs" in methods of painting as long as the result looks like you want it to look.

A la prima is much faster than grisaille and quite frankly, if I knew how to make that look good, I'd be doing it.

I have a lot of paintings in me and I can't possibly live long enough to paint them all. I prefer to make things happen as fast as possible as I am an impatient person!

Shadows
 

Thank you Karin for your reply, I'm going to go ahead and practice some glazing on the copy of 'Lady Agnew' that I started, just to see how it goes. So should I leave it as is and try to get darker shadows with the glazes? I feel I need to focus on making things appear more 3-D.

I now understand some of the differences between a la prima painting and grisaille painting (thanks Peggy) that I hadn't even thought about before. I just need to experiment with both methods to see which way will work best for me. I so often feel like I'm back at square one learning a new this or that, always new methods. I suppose I am making strides to becoming a "portrait artist" but most of the time it feels like I am stuck at the starting gate. Not to imply it's some kind of race.

I will look into Vermeer for copying. I have a book on Vermeer that's about 300 pages thick explaining lots of detail about his paintings, the layers, etc.

Joan

Yes.

Sargent copy underpainting continued
 

Here is where my copy of Sargent's 'Lady Agnew' is, the original by Sargent can be seen under the post titled 'attachment'.

I absolutely love this way of paining, with the glazes! This is 2 thin glazes of burnt umber. Then a layer of 'flesh tone' which I mixed from white, raw sienna and burnt umber plus Liquin. While that was wet I added some alizaron crimson (I would have used Indian Red but don't have any yet).

Now I feel like I need to redefine the nose, it looks like I'm seeing the nose through a wash, which I am. I like the hazy look of it, no harsh lines, but I feel like it looks unfinished. Maybe because I ended up using a bit of red mixed in almost everywhere but the nose and somehow the nose now looks . . . unfinished. I also feel like I need stronger shadows/color under the chin.

I have not gone in and painted the eyebrows or eyes yet, I realize they look washed-out.

Any direction and/or critiques would be welcome.

Thank you,
Joan

Resolution
 

The resolution doesn't look so good, I can almost see 'grids' of color, it doesn't look like that in real life. I'll try to post a close-up of the face and see if I can get a better representation.

Joan

Close-up
 

I have posted a close-up of the face, it's under 'resolution. I meant to post it in this same thread . . .

Joan

I looked at this and at your closeup....don't redefine the nose at this stage. You don't need dark....you need light. Sometimes what we need is the exact opposite of what we think. When you begin to add light, everything else begins to appear darker by comparison.

Try some gentle light in the face starting with the highlighted areas.

To make light, mix the exact color of the sikntone before you and add (what I call) "the universal color of light."**

**To mix the "universal color of light" you add Winsor Newton Yellow ochre pale to titanium white until you approximate the color of WN's Naples yellow. You can tweak this mixture by adding more or less white...

When darks?
 

Hi Karin,
Thank you for taking the time to look at my painting and post.

"don't redefine the nose at this stage. "

Do you mean to do it at another time? When would you redefine the nose and whatever other shadows need warming up?

I understand that I need to develop my own method of glazing, to some point, but from reading your posts it seemed to me that the next thing to do was warm up the shadows. I know there aren't formulas, I'm just trying to understand the reasons behind the steps.

Joan

When one adds a dark too early, it can tend to appear much too dark later on. How can you judge darkness without light?

Trust me, build your light first and then enrich and warm up your deep shadows at the end.

Building light helps you define and locate your halftones. You must make sure that you don't goof and warm the halftones along with your shadows.

A halftone is the cool area sandwiched between warm light and warm shadow. It is where light and shadow meet, i.e., halftones are neither light nor shadow.

Ahhhhh, I get it
 

Ahhhhhh, now I get it, that makes perfect sense. Karin, I do trust you! I just want to understand why I'm doing what I'm doing and now I see the 'light' (I'm getting silly, time for bed for me!)

Thanks again Karin,

Joan