A portrait from life at NHIA

[Rob Sullivan]

This past semester, I've had the wonderful opportunity to teach Portrait Painting (as well as a Beginning Drawing class) at the New Hampshire Institute of art in Manchester, N.H.

There are only four students in the class, so I thought this was a good opportunity for me to paint alongside them, rather than take up a whole 3-hour class with just me doing a demo. That way, we could all progress together. Of course, I still have to teach them, so I end up spending perhaps 20 minutes to a half hour at the easel each class.

None of the students had painted a portrait from life before, so we "warmed up" on a plaster bust of a simplified "planar" head. I had them employ the same technique of underpainting in raw umber and the lay-in of the opaque (in this case, monochromatic) oil paint. [This will be expounded upon in following posts]

Here's my quickie rendition of "Ike" (he looks like Dwight Eisenhower when seen in profile).

[Rob Sullivan]

After the class finished up "Ike", we moved on to the live model, Kirstin.

I have her set up under an incandescent 300W mud lamp. Lord knows I'd love to use something other than this, but with what I make, I need to save the Sunwave 94 CRI bulbs for my studio.

Studio 13 (lucky me!) has very big north- and west-facing windows, so our fill light is naturally cooler than the yellow-orange incandescent. Kirsten is quite pale, so having some warm tones brought out by the incandescent light isn't a bad thing.

Here's what she looks like (approximately) from my angle. Bear in mind that this is not a reference photo - just a snapshot of the setup. A good thing, too! Boy, does her hair look orange ! In reality, it's dark brown with some warm highlights. Isn't that amazing! Can't trust photos entirely, can we?

[Rob Sullivan]

Using Gamsol (a wonderful, truly odorless turp substitute) and raw umber, I showed the students how to complete the underpainting.

First, I blocked in a linear structure, sight-measuring the major proportions. Second, I massed in value in broad tones, lifting out darks with a lint-free cloth in transitional (midtone) areas - always working from dark to light. The underpainting is compete when the values are correct (or as correct as possible).

It's very similar to the "wipeout" technique in a sense. I've adapted it to my own predilections for drawing with the brush, and I teach it that way, unless someone asks me specifically to teach them the wipeout.

The question always comes up along the lines of, "what's the point of this when we're going to cover it up?" And I tell them that the underpainting acts as a value "map" for the opaque layers. Also, having already observed and recorded values based solely on value and not color, the addition of color on subsequent layers won't confuse the value issue (it invariably does, but this sounds encouraging!).

[Rob Sullivan]

The "ugly stage".

...Made moreso, because there's so much teaching required in regard to color mixing, that I didn't quite get to where I wanted at this stage. So, we're talking like 15 minutes on this one. It's close, though.

I haven't fully realized the Paxson palette yet (at least, not well enought to teach it), so I teach the way I'm most familiar with, using (oh dear) cadmium colors.

Here's the palette:

Cadmium Yellow
Cadmium Orange
Cadmium Red
Yellow Ochre
Burnt Umber
Raw Umber
Ultramarine Blue
Alizarin Crimson (for mixing the sweater color)
Ivory Black
Titanium White

Medium: Holbein cold pressed linseed oil

It's simple, I know - but I think it's fairly effective.

...And Bouguereau was known to have used Cadmium Yellow and Orange, according to Daniel Burliegh Parkhurst. Am I rationalizing? Perhaps

The first thing I show the students is the use of neutrals. I demonstrate the mixing of 3 types of neutrals in a 5th value: cool, warm, and a "true" neutral. Cool = black + white. Warm = raw umber + white. Neutral = black + white + raw umber.

"True" neutrals play a vital role in the shadow planes in flesh tones, for when they are juxtaposed with the light plane of the head, full of warm colors, the eye shifts them into a cooler mode automatically. Too cool in the shadow, and the head takes on an alien look. Too warm, and the shadow plane comes too far forward. It's true that there are places where you'll find definitive spots of warm and cool in the shadows, but they are just "spots", and not the basis of the entire shadow plane.

Next, we mix up our much more chromatic light plane colors. I asked the students to observe the model's "personal palette", and discern what's happening in her face color-wise. Most of the chroma occurs in the middle third of the face, and the jawline and forehead planes are more neutrally pigmented. Kirstin had a tendency (under this light) to go ochre-to-neutral in the jawline and around the mouth, and a rose-red color in the cheek and nostrils.

Using the cadmiums and yellow ochre, we mixed out 3 values (middle, light, very light) altering the hue from red to yellow as the value increased. I had them pay careful attention to the fact that mixing white to bump up the value deadens the chroma, and you end up with a cadaverous flesh tone (not pleasing!). So I told them to always mix back a touch of yellow or orange to re-invigorate the warmth in that value.

Once we had this basic palette down, we laid in our shadow values first (neutrals), while I stressed the necessity of working from dark to light. The came our middle value in the light plane. I showed how to tweak the chroma through mixing like-value neutrals into the chromatic middle value. I also talked about hue-shifting as well in this region, such as adding yellow ochre wet-on-wet to get the desired effect. From there, we built our lights, careful not to overmix on the canvas, noting that this causes unwanted neutrality as well as pushing everything in the light plane into a middle-value state.

While this is all happening, we are constantly "tweaking" the drawing - paying careful attention to plane placement and the big relationships.

I am using some Isabey #10 flats and filberts for this stage. The panel is from SourceTek: Claussens triple-primed portrait linen mounted on birch, 10 x 12.

*Note - This photo was taken under warm light conditions. Notice the color of the raw umber background. Unfortunately, everything is a little warmer than it should be here.

[Rob Sullivan]

More refinement of color and drawing all at once. Almost 90% light plane work. Some touches of an ultramarine-shifted neutral in the darks near the side planes of her mouth and chin. Also an ochre-shifted neutral on her jawline in the shadow.

I forgot to mention the sweater: alizarin, ultramarine and black. White in the lights, with a cad red/ultra blend added back. It was painted very quickly.

I finally started laying in the hair! - Burnt Umber, raw umber, white, touch of cad orange. She's wearing a black headband, and you can see I didn't hit that yet for some odd reason. Next week, I promise!

[Rob Sullivan]

Here's a shot of the students. The third is hidden in the middle. The other student is behind me to the right. Not a big class, but it's fun for me to work alongside them in this circumstance. And, hey - I'd get paid the same if there were 14 of them!