Captive Son

[Clive Fullagar]

I am a new member of the Portrait Artist's Forum and am wanting some feeback on portraits that I am working on. This is an area that I would like to take up in a serious way in the near future.

I am posting a recent portrait that I have just completed, entitled "Captive Son." It is an oil, 31" x 22". I work from photographs so I will also post the source photograph and several details.

As I said I am a new member so I am not sure if the attachments will work. Anyway, here goes.

[Clive Fullagar]

Here is the source photograph for "Captive Son".

[Clive Fullagar]

A detail of the head of "Captive Son."

[Clive Fullagar]

Finally, a detail of the hands. Any comments would be gratefully appreciated. I can supply more information or images on demand. I have posted some information about this image on the "Introductions Forum."

[Steven Sweeney]

Welcome, Clive,

The images came through fine, as you will have discovered. Thanks for the "link" to your Intro remarks. I commend to any other members having a look here, the review of Clive's explication in his Introduce Yourself post.

I'll begin with a technical term from my 14-year-old son's lexicon: "Cool". (A few decades ago, I was . . . No, that's not true. I was a farm kid and a geek. Let's just say that my friends and classmates were describing everything as "cool".)

You've handled a lot of challenges here with perspective and foreshortening very well, not an easy thing to pull off. The fruit bowl is rather obviously a bit out of perspective, but in this case I find the compositional "pointing" toward your son to be interesting, so whether the foreshortened ellipse is "on" isn't quite as notable as it might be in, say, a still life.

He looks "tense" to me, shoulders and neck full of energy, "hunched up", and as I look at your reference photo (and think of how laid back -- as a "statement" -- my teen is), I think two things contribute to that look. The far shoulder (on our right) is a bit too short, and the slope of the near shoulder (on our left) isn't quite captured. In the photo it drops quickly in a relaxed, unstressed slope. In the painting there's a choppier and more tentative slope, which is creating a "mood" that I don't see in the photo.

The only other thing I'll note at this point is that I think you'll strengthen the piece overall if you take full advantage of your value range. I'm especially searching in the painting for darks -- in the hair, in shadow areas. Finding and defining them will help in establishing the illusion of form and of depth.

To that point, look at every value not only in relation to its immediately adjoining value shape, but in relation to other values elsewhere in the painting. To take one example, the shadow side of the legs of the chair. Compared to the lighted side, yes, your shadow side is darker. But it's nowhere near dark enough when compared to, say (and I'm looking at the photo now), the shadows that should appear in (our) left side of his shirt, or to the left of his hands, or the shadow cast on the wall by the easel.

So try to think simultaneously in terms of both the area you're working on and the way in which that area relates to the values and hues of the picture as a whole.

Cheers.

[Steven Sweeney]

Clive,

I like the work and keep dropping back in to take another look.

What I wrote about the shoulders being hunched was merely in comparison to the photo. There's nothing "wrong" with them in the painting, and in fact they convey another teen mood (besides "laid back") that I've been privileged to witness around my house of late.

That being said, I do think his left arm (on our right) looks very narrow and disappears unnaturally quickly around the body. In the photo we're actually able to see part of the arm above the elbow, before it goes into the bell of the sleeve. (Where I previously said that the shoulder might be short, I now think it also has to do with the visual absence of the upper arm.)

Reiterating the earlier comment about darks, I think you'd especially profit from letting the shadows on the floor and wall get darker as they approach the physical items that are casting those shadows. For example, if right near the bottoms of the chair legs you darken the cast shadows on the floor, you'll sit the chair down on that floor and avoid a "floating" look.

I like the yellow/red/orange and violet/gray color scheme, too, in terms both of complement and temperature. Whether you did that by design or intuition, keep doing it.

[Clive Fullagar]

Steven,

Thanks for your useful comments. I had not noticed about the left arm, but I think that you are spot on. The values of the shadows is also a valid point and I will work on both of those. In terms of the shirt shadows, I don't want to make them too dark. I am trying to prevent the painting from becoming too "broody" and too dark. Having teenage boys yourself, I think you will understand that mood does not carry as much weight when you are 16 -- being too serious is not cool -- so you have to look disgruntled in a "cool" way. So what I am trying to say is that I do not want the values to be too contrasted, too "sturm & drang." The subject was a reluctant sitter, but it was no big deal. One thing I do like about the picture is the lightness of the light.

The issue that I am personally working on at the moment is the treatment of the face with respect to the rest of the figure/painting. There is more of a sketchiness in the face. I know I could rework it and make it more precise, but I am not sure whether that would work either for the subject or the mood. Soft lines may work for portraits of young children, but on 16-year-old boys they don't (by the way I do believe that teenage boys are very under-represented in portraits). I also like the spontaneity and "rawness" of the treatment of the face. You see the problems of being a psychologist and a portrait painter -- they make terrible bedfellows. I would love to hear your and others' opinions on the thoughts expressed above. Anyway, I will work on the left arm and the shadows of the table and chairs.

By the way, regarding the fruit bowl, it is elliptical in shape and not circular. I don't know whether that will change your views on its perspective.

Once again thanks for your insight. I always enjoy your comments in this Forum.

[Steven Sweeney]

You may be able to finesse the sturm, but I wouldn't try to avoid all the drang. I understand what you're saying about resisting excessive darks, but I do think you'll profit by even some small, judiciously placed contrasts. (You don't, by the way, necessarily have to go "dark". Sometimes you can pull this off with temperature variations.) My thinking on this has mostly to do with the illusion of form, and the avoidance of "cut-out" shapes if possible.

I think there are five areas that will really come to life with very small increments of change, either toward darker or cooler hues. They are:

1) The hair, which right now is not only substantially lighter overall than in the photo, but is "hairs" and doesn't fully partake of the form-defining shadow areas that must be in there somewhere (after all, the other objects in the scene are casting shadows).

2) The area of the shirt near the crook of his right arm (on our left). The form certainly dips underneath the arm at that point, and out of the light.

3) The area of the shirt along the top of the forearm on that same side. Again, the shirt is going to bunch up a little there and then turn under to go behind the arm. There's going to be a definite shadow along that turn.

4) The area of the shirt below that arm, as it rounds the body to our left. Not only is that area out of the direct light from outside, but it's shaded by the arm itself.

5) The shadow area along on the neck along the collar, on our right. That's going to be quite dark, as in the photo.

These are almost all in the nature of accents (which can be enormously effective), rather than statements, and I don't think you'll change the emotional feel of the piece by including them, should you choose to do so.

I hadn't gotten into the face before, and perhaps I'll leave that for others.

As I said, the bowl doesn't trouble me (whether it's round or elliptical in nature), because it rather "fits" into the perspective and foreshortening of the boy's pose. That does bring to mind, nonetheless, one incident in the studio in which a student was painting an irregularly shaped piece of pottery (that is, a piece that "should" have been round but wasn't.) He was quite sure that he should paint it as it was, but the instructor advised him to paint it symmetrically, because if he did it true-to-life lopsided, anyone who viewed the painting would assume that he (the student) had been the one to misjudge the dimensions.

I'm not sure what that little story means, but my fingers wouldn't quit typing.

[Steven Sweeney]

Oh, I wanted to note your comment about the underrepresentation of teen males in portraiture. No question about it. Even on this premier site, when I go to Family Portraits and further select "Teens", of the 52 portraits that pop up, roughly 52 are of young women.

However, many of those links will lead to sites that includes boys. A favorite of mine is William T. Chambers', at http://www.portraitartist.com/wtcham...ly/teenboy.htm

[Clive Fullagar]

Steven,

I'll work on my values this weekend - sounds very moral. I agree with your observations. I've been sitting looking at the picture for a catatonic time and generally think that the shadows behind the figure could be much darker. The lightness that is currently there (where the floor meets the wall) was probably caused by the window (see source photo). I believe that working on the values of the shadows and the shirt will give me a direction for the face - which as you know I have not been quite pleased with. For example the value of the extreme right of the face near the ear is almost the same as the right cheek. I might give the facial values more variations in the hope that the face takes on more form. I'll try and work on it in the next few days and post the results of my efforts next week.