Portrait Artist Forum - How do you paint chains?

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How do you paint chains?

I am working on a figurative piece that involves a head dress with lots of gold chains. The larger pieces are not a problem, but I have hit a roadblock with the small chains in the medallion featured here.

My aim is to be as true to the image of this piece as possible and I want to show each link! Since the area is so small I need to know if it would be better to darken the area with the darkest value and then scratch into it or to keep it in the lightest value and go for the dark shapes. Or maybe there is another solution?!

Thanks for your help.

For those interested the entire image look here:
http://world-market-portraits.blogspot.com/

Lead white and copal yields a mix that can be controlled between very stiff to "ropey" like warm mozzarella. "Sculpting" this kind of detail as a built-up area, then glazing dark tones into it when dry is one approach that will yield a more convincing "3-D" effect than sgraffito (scratching lights out of a dark over-painting).

Take a look at Rembrandt's "Saskia as Bellona" and "Man in Armor" for his handling of detail encrustations on the armor.

A matter of taste, and certainly of the patience and skill of the painter to "embroider" jewelry in full detail, but I'd think it better to imply the detail in careful accent than to rebuild the piece with paint!

Thank you Richard for taking the time to respond. :)

I have to try this technique sometime. In the meantime it will be interesting to hear the different type of approaches that have worked for others.

After trying varies ways to make sense of the jumble of links on the medallion, I decided to keep the mid brown underpainting and to use a method similar to erasing out.

For this purpose I have used a very old mini brush (almost worn down to the ferule), which I dipped into solvent and basically scratched out the lightest links. Then using my pen again, I reemphasized the darks.

Taking into consideration that this is the underpainting, there is no fear of compromising the surface quality. This technique worked nicely and the chains have taken form given me a little road map for the successive paint layers.

I don't know if this suggestion will be entirely helpful, but when painting jewelry, often I've found that the level of detail and inherent wide value range can create a focal point in your painting where you didn't intend one. So, I try to make it very soft.

The method I like to use is to model the jewelry in a narrower value range, leaving out one or two steps of both the darkest and lightest values. Then paint back in wet with the darkest values so the edges will be super soft, leaving lights and catch lights for last. I like the ropy cremnitz white too, but last time I used flake and a little stand oil, and worked the highlights in tiny adjacent dots. (Thank you, Jan Vermeer!)

Thank you Lisa for your response. I love to hear how people tackle things differently. There are always new ways to be learned and mental notes to be taken what to watch out for to avoid the little pitfalls.

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wide value range can create a focal point in your painting where you didn't intend one.

You are absolutely right, but in this figurative piece it's really all about the head dress and the theme of "water".

My model is actually the designer of this piece. She designs costumes and writes about tribal costuming for a magazine in the
U. K. This head dress was featured in her recent article and it is one of a series about the four elements.

I find your suggestions very helpful and I will keep them in mind once I start work in the color layers.

Here is a nice painting of jewelery by Luis Falero "An Oriental Beauty"

Here is something I found in "Beyond the Naked Eye"

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When making images Renaissance painters were ingenious in their exploitation of their materials. To present golden objects gold leaf could be used, often in the form of mordant gilding, in which the shape or pattern to be gilded was painted with an adhesive substance, the mordant.

Gold leaf was then laid over it, adhering to the sticky mordant but not to the dry surface of the surroundings paint. Alternatively, gold leaf could be powdered and mixed with a binder to make gold paint, usually called "shell gold"because it was traditionally kept in mussel shells. In the Netherlands in the early 15th century painters began to create the illusion of metallic objects with paint alone, the lustre and reflective properties of gold indicated by highlights of lead-tin yellow. This pigment has considerable bulk when applied in oil; if details such as the gold threads in a cloth-of-gold-fabric are viewed in raking light, the relief becomes strikingly apparent. Raking light reveals the texture of oil paint and the direction of brushstrokes. A stroke made with a paint containing dense lead-based pigments may form ridges of impasto. Brushes can be used to manipulate the colours while they are still soft so that they bleed into one another or displace the paint of previous strokes the technique of wet-in-wet painting. Soft oil can also be worked with implements other than the brush. Campin used a pointed stick (perhaps the other end of a brush) to indent the fabric edges of a folded linen headdress, while Van Eyck actually scraped the wet paint away to indicate the bristles of a dusting brush.

For those following my progress, a new image of the work in progress has been uploaded here:
http://world-market-portraits.blogspot.com/

For those of you interested in getting some ideas about painting pearls look here:

http://www.geocities.com/~jlhagan/lessons/perl.htm

Great for "photo shoppers", I suppose . . . and a case in point how computer-generated images can fall down.

The "highlight" point of view remained the same on each pearl in the string. Re-read the part about "learning how to observe". Back to class!

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The high lights of the luster of any particular object will not be situated in the center of the illuminated part, but will make as many changes of position as the eye that beholds it.- Da Vinci

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The painter who draws by practice and judgement of the eye, without the use of reason, is like the mirror that reproduces within itself all the objects which are set opposite to it without knowledge of the same. - Leonardo Da Vinci

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Re-read the part about "learning how to observe". Back to class!

- Totally uncalled for! ;C