Portrait of a friend

Brian Koelz · 04-27-2003, 10:50 PM

This is a portrait in process, done on wood panel 13"x13". The main work I feel is left for this one is in the shoulder structure, building some reasonable but diminishing form to which the head is attached. Also, I feel there is a drawing problem from the crown to brow. Please let me know your impressions and suggestions. Thank you everyone for a tremendous site.

Brian Koelz · 04-27-2003, 11:24 PM

Here is a detail.

Linda Brandon · 04-28-2003, 01:14 AM

Dear Brian,

Thanks for posting this interesting and moody portrait. I think you handle paint in an individual style and I really like the "feel" of this head.

You might think you have a problem with the crown of the head because the head is tilted down. Check the position of the ears in relation to the eyebrows. In a level head the tops of the ears are close to the lowest point of the eyebrow. (Very rough generalization.) The tops of these ears are above the eyebrows. This probably also means that you shouldn't see much of the nostrils. Check this out on yourself in the mirror.

In a down-tilted head, you should also get a good view of the inner edge of the pinkish lower lid as it comes up against the moist eyeball. I see this in the left eye but not the right one. Even in the shadow side, that lid edge should be there.

The two sides of the subject's face are quite different from each other. I wouldn't say it's beyond belief that your friend really looks like this, but you might want to recheck some measurements. For example, the pupils should be the same size in each eye.

This painting has the feel of a life portrait, but now that I re-read your post, you didn't specify whether this is from life or from a photo.

You may have the same problem that I have when I paint my friends from life: we talk a lot and the features just don't stay put. I try to get my friends to stay quiet when I paint them but most find this impossible.

Please feel free to jump in and comment on other posts.

Best regards,
Linda

Mari DeRuntz · 04-29-2003, 12:11 AM

Hi Brian,

Welcome to the site!

This painting strikes me as a powerful start. Frequently I find myself at this stage and then go into "correction" mode; I imagine the better I get, the more accuracy I'll be able to hit earlier, and the two worlds of creating and editing will become less separate.

What does the subject do for a living? See, you're already well on your way to the more intriguing aspect of portraiture: the narrative of the individual.

While you've hit some emotional intensity, there are questions posed by the drawing, per Linda's observations. Marry the two and your work will be very interesting. The other thing I'm curious about is the coarseness of the ground; was this intentional? It seems the artists who chose to work on panel do so for the ultra-smooth qualities of this particular ground.

Any lack of response is probably related to many of the members of the Forum traveling this last week to Reston, VA, for the annual PSA Portrait Convention. Sit tight; I'm sure more is coming.

I look forward to seeing more of your work. And I'll second Linda's invitation to have you jump in to offer critiques on other's work. A critique is a gift and a great way to "give back" to the hard-working artists on this Forum.

Brian Koelz · 04-29-2003, 04:13 PM

Dear Linda and Mari,

Thank you both for responding with generosity. Mari, I get the sense already what you mean by "gift" in that receiving a critique is just about like getting a thoughtful letter (it is exactly that).

I am including the photo reference here as suggested in the guidelines for posting. With this piece I was handling a photo reference for the first time after a long period of working exclusively from "life". I want the paintings done from photo to feel as though they've been done from life including all of the emotional content as well as the plastic information one gets from three-dimensional interface. The question of reference posed by Linda is encouraging in this respect.

Linda, your advice about the drawing has turned me on to some almost laughable errors (like the sitter's right ear). Thank-you. Through the photo you may see how my mishandling of her right eye-socket produced such a thing. This brings me to the biography of the sitter per Mari's question.

The subject is a female fellow-graduate student whose studio lay next to my own for about two years. I was interested in her physiognomy for reasons you all may be able to see from the photograph. An absolutely haunting psychology is evidenced through such a face and look. Surprisingly it was very easy to get her to reproduce the look I wanted, I just said "look how you normally look", and she did. Haunting. She is herself a painter, doing work in more of a collage aesthetic; very good work in my opinion.

Mari, an answer to your ground question is that yes, it was intentional to start with a textured surface. I like those opportunities afforded by a literal push/pull, and because I was making this painting for myself I was liberated from something neccessarily "refined" in the sense of a clean, fine-art image. My other answer is no, I didn't really know where the portrait was going in terms of the level of resolution of a likeness, so in hindsight the image might benefit more from the smooth surface you described. For me your question is a constant one, I would love to hear your preferences and/or reasoning and experience. I will also post a quick figure study where I've found 'formica' laminate a suitably quick ground on which to work.

Thanks again for the warm welcome,
Brian

Brian Koelz · 04-29-2003, 04:16 PM

This is the photo reference. I'm learning to post one at a time.

Mike McCarty · 04-29-2003, 09:08 PM

I like your portrait a lot. I can see your "haunting" expression and understand your want to express it.

My first thought was that her shoulders are a bit too broad. As I look at the photo, without the complete shoulder reference, my eye tells me that you may have made them a bit too wide. It would seem that her somewhat narrow face might accompany a more slight figure. But these are just guesses.

Mari DeRuntz · 04-30-2003, 01:34 AM

Quote:

Receiving a critique is just about like getting a thoughtful letter (it is exactly that)

Hmmm, beautiful quote!

Now you've opened a can of worms--you're a graduate student. Are you a graduate art student? Where? Medium? How far along (in terms of graduation date)? If you're in a painting program, who are the masters? What are your favorite paintings/who are your favorite painters? I live next to the Ringling School of Art, which offers what I call "MTV art" education. I swear the only problem with this forum is that you can't ask these things over coffee/croissant.... I ask these prodding questions because I've just committed to two summer months of atelier training at Mims Studio in NC.

Thanks for elaborating on your piece, by the way. I thought she was an artist: it's a very unique stare that artists develop, almost that they're directing a more observant gaze at you than you're directing at them, don't you think?

Brian Koelz · 05-02-2003, 01:46 AM

Hello Mike and Mari,

Mike, thank you and I completely agree with the shoulder work. Empathy is so nice.

Mari, wait, wait, there's more to the story. When I was in graduate school, I made another one of these paintings. When the time came for critique, the subject disliked my painting to the point of not wanting to look at the thing. So, of course, I gave it to her. It was last known in the possession of her mother, somewhere in Canada. I have often wondered about the painting. That was about three-and-a-half years ago.

More recently I rediscovered the photo image and compulsively decided to try the painting again, curious to see if I'd learned anything in the meantime.

I was awarded an MFA in painting/printmaking from Southern Illinois U. in Carbondale a year ago this week. I have to say that my technical training was almost entirely self-inflicted. There were a few very competent painters there, but at the graduate level one doesn't receive technical training. Rather, one works with abstractions more or less relevant to one's "body of work".

Some things that spring to mind are Chardin's still life paintings, Carel Fabritus (which is to say Rembrandt), the latter's "Jan Six", Balthus, especially the portrait of Derain w/ daughter, surely something of all the old-masters, Morandi, Matisse, Braque, Bonnard, Kokoschka, I accept Gerhard Richter as inevitable and respect him for how he handled it, any peer truly interested in painting, and thats probably enough for now.

Oh, and very nice of you to suggest, I'll have that chocolate one please...

Brian

Michele Rushworth · 05-04-2003, 10:38 PM

There's a nice feeling of texture and energy to this canvas.

However, I see a lot of distortion in the drawing of the overall head shape which I have pointed out in the attached image. The upper right quadrant of the head seems to be pushed down and to the left, quite a lot. This type of distortion could be caused by photographing the painting on an angle or with a wide angle lens from an off center viewpoint.

It's possible the head is drawn accurately in the painting and this distortion is just in the photo. Perhaps you could check and see and repost the correctly photographed painting, if that is the case.