Fancy Lady

[Nathan Cremer]

What an absolutely amazing piece. I'm very impressed with the painting/portrait in the background. I would love to see a close up of it.

[Peggy Baumgaertner]

Wow! Thanks for the wonderful response! I have a few thoughts to share on composition decisions, which I will post when I have a chance later today.

For Nathan, I was able to bring up the background painting, but is very grainy. It was pulled off of the 35mm slide of the entire 4' x 5' portrait. (I imagine the image on the slide is probably a quarter of an inch wide. I didn't think to take a close up of the hunt scene.)

Peggy


Oh, an aside, the entire hunt scene was painted in middle values. I didn't want it to compete with the foreground figure. As a matter of fact, the entire painting is a middle value except for the woman and dog, which are light values, and the woman's dress, which is a dark value. (This might not be as apparent from the slide).

Even though the entire hunt scene is in a middle value, you still can have the entire range of light middle values, mid middle values, and dark middle values, as well as color transitions. This would be a very good examples of what I teach, that you have a tremendous range to create in even if you are restricting yourself to one value - in this case the middle value.

[Rebecca Willoughby]

Peggy,

As the daughter of a former professional fox hunter and hound trainer, I appreciate the hunt scene as much as the grand portrait into which it so perfectly fits. This painting in a painting brought a tear to my eye as I remembered my father standing by the horses surrounded by the hounds. He passed away in April of 2000. Thank you for bringing happy memories. It is truly beautiful.

Rebecca

[Gina Rath]

I am so happy to see that you have posted this beautiful portrait! Will Enns had posted a composition question a few days ago about arranging a couple for a portrait.

I e-mailed him and told him some of the information you had shared at the workshop. How from experience you now realize how much arrangement and placement of hands and the interaction of the figures adds to the design. I actually described this painting to him telling him about how you had carefully placed her arms and hands and the dog at her feet.

I'm going to e-mail him and tell him to check this out. And I'll let him know you are going to share some composition decision information.

Thanks for sharing!

Gina

[Peggy Baumgaertner]

Well, I will see if I can explain a little about how I put this portrait together.

Compositionally, you need an entrance point into a painting. In this painting, it is the shiny gold plates and clock on the top of the mantelpiece in the upper left corner of the painting. This leads you to Lin's head. There you can linger a bit, see the jewelry, her right arm cocked over the back of the chair, her hand playing with the fur, the you begin the visual journey down the extended arm.

At one point, I had the option of bringing her left arm across her body, and have her also caressing the fur with her left hand. But that would have created a closed loop enclosing the upper half of her body. You wouldn't see the rest of the painting. The arm extending down her leg directs your eye down, and Lin is actually pointing at were I want you to look next, the dog. The dog is a stopper. If the dog had not been there, your eye would have moved down and out of the painting. The dog catches your eye and stops that movement.

I made a white cutout the size of the dog, and moved it around the bottom of the portrait until it was placed correctly. If the dog was too low and too far to the left, your eye would also have been drawn down and out of the painting. After being stopped by the dog, your eye moves up the shiny reflections on the floor and enters the hunt scene. From there you move back at Lin's face, and are caught in the visual loop. No place to leave the painting. I also hope that once you are in the painting, that you will have interesting things to engage you, the fireplace in the background with gargoyle guards, the two paintings on the back wall, the jewels on her shoes, the embroidery on the chair, etc.

Before I started to take photographs, I observed Lin, watched her movements. I already had an idea for the pose, and when I saw her sitting in the chair, I had her stretch out and point her foot, to achieve that wonderful long line. I took close-ups of her hands, and had her shake out her hands and relax them into those beautiful, fluid, languid gestures. The attitude is all her, I just recorded it. The lighting was achieved by opening up the front door and placing the chair in front of it. That gave us that strong flood of light across the painting. (..The biggest problem was keeping the dog from running out the front door....)

Basically, the entire composition was created before and during the photo session.

Some changes made during the completion of the painting: the fireplace was originally on the back wall where the hunt scene is, but I wanted her to have a long gaze, and the fireplace was a distraction, so I moved the fireplace behind her. I wanted something on the back wall and settled for either a painting or a tapestry, both of which they have in their home. Lin rides the hounds, so it was a no brainier to have the tapestry or the painting be of a Victorian hunt scene, I won't go into the discussion of the conception of that painting, but it is my original.

The final piece was the chair. Lin's chair was white and gold, and I could not make it work. The introduction of a light area in the bottom portion of the portrait threw off the composition. So I substituted one of the darker prop chairs from my studio.

Mari got it very close, she just "viewed" the painting in the reverse direction, but you end up in the same place.

I hope this hasn't gone on too long. There have been much discussion of this forum about the planning that goes into the composition, and I wanted to walk you through the process I use in working out a painting. I think I told Gina that I might spend three or four days in the studio moving elements around on the canvas before I start the painting. (I do not do a thumbnail or smaller study piece before I start a painting. I can only see what I will end up with if I am working out the bugs full size.)

Peggy

[Will Enns]

Peggy,

I find this composition most appealing and original. It doesn't remind me of any painting I've seen before, and it effectively holds my attention better than most.

Your comments on composition were enlightening even on the first pass, and I believe many of us will continue to mine them for gold.

I would be interested to know if this woman is as tall as she appears. She is very elegant, and must be delighted.

Thank you for sharing this with us,