Portrait Class – Week 6

It was so nice to get back to my portrait drawing class this week; I had to miss it last week to attend a meeting. Our model was an attractive young woman with copper coloured hair that the painters and pastellers enjoyed trying to capture (well, most of them!) She had some very interesting angles and shadows in her face, especially on her forehead. On the whole, I’m quite pleased with this drawing, although as usual I see problems in the photo that I didn’t see in the real thing. The biggest lesson I learned today was not to use the school’s boards – see how the woodgrain has given her stripes?

Peinture a l’essence

Here’s another portrait from the same photo as yesterday’s – although she seems to have had a nose job in the meantime! But I wasn’t really going for accuracy here; this was a just quickie, done in about 30 minutes, and with no preliminary sketch. Its purpose was to try a technique I stumbled across recently, peinture a l’essence, or painting with solvent, which was apparently invented by Dégas. It involves “de-oiling” your oil paint by letting it sit on paper towels or other absorbent paper for several hours (I used newsprint), then scraping it onto your palette and using solvent to dilute and apply it. The paint dries very quickly as the solvent evaporates, which did make blending difficult. The result has a matte appearance like pastel or gouache.

The really interesting thing is that this technique allows you to paint on paper – regular, untreated, unprimed paper – without leaving an oily stain. This was done on the same Canson Mi-Teintes as yesterday’s conté sketch. Also, some artists apparently use this technique for underpainting, because it results in an ultra-lean layer over which they can apply their regular “fat” paints with no fears of cracking.

Quick Conté Sketch

A quick conté sketch to experiment with using white conté for highlighting, done from a photo.I am beginning to enjoy using charcoal and conté, both of which I found quite intimidating until recently. Although I’ve barely scratched the surface with them, they have such a wide range of possibilities, depending on how they’re applied and what they’re blended with. The paper is Canson Mi-Teintes ivory, and I used the smoother side.

Green

I’ve looked at yellow, red and blue pigments, so now it’s green’s turn. This is the best photo I was able to get of my chart, but it’s too blue, especially those glowing tints of phthalo green in the first column!

Phthalo Green PG7 & PG36

I have Winsor Green Yellow Shade PG36 (W&N series 2 ) I T

Like Phthalo Blue, the two phthalo green pigments are lightfast, intense colours with strong tinting power. PG 7 is a blue green; PG36 is more yellow, usually slightly lighter in value. It is generally not as powerful as the bluer version.

Other Phthalo Green:

• Winsor Green PG7 (W&N series 2) I T
• Phthalocyanine Green PG7 (M Graham) I, T
• Phthalocyanine Green Yellow Shade PG36 (M Graham) I, T

Convenience greens based on Phthalo Green:

• Phthalo Turquoise (W&N series 1) I T = PG7 + PB15 (phthalo blue)
• Permanent Green Light(W&N series 2) I ST = PG7+ PW6 + PY47
• Permanent Green Light (M Graham) I SO = PG7 + PY151
• Sap Green Permanent (M Graham) I T =  PG7 + PY129 + PBk
• Winsor Emerald (W&N series 2) I O = PG36 + PW4 (zinc white)
• Permanent Green(W&N series 2) II ST = PY138 + PG7 + PW6
• Permanent Green Deep (W&N series 2) I ST = PY138 + PG7 + PW6
• Chrome Green Deep Hue(W&N series 1) I O = PB15 + PG7 + PY42

Chromium Green Oxide PG 17   ASTM   l

I have Oxide of Chromium (Griffin series 1) AA O

Chromium green oxide is a very lightfast, opaque yellow green. It has the green most often used for military camouflage. It is often recommended for underpainting portraits, mixed with Mars Black and white. According to Handprint,

PG17 makes an interesting “green earth” to complement a red earth such as venetian red or a yellow earth such as yellow ochre. It is useful to subdue bright synthetic organic pigments, such as benzimida yellow or phthalo green, which temper its dullness and combine well with its fine powdery texture. Because it contains both blue violet and red reflectance, it has interesting mixing behavior with warm and cool colors. It is tricky to use, however, as it will overpower or gray almost any other paint, and tends to color shift noticeably or produce a clayey color texture as it dries: test mixtures on scrap paper first. I find it works best in dilute mixtures with yellow or green to make naturalistic, dull olive greens, and in warm mixtures where a touch of it effectively desaturates or cools reds and oranges.

Other PG17:

• Oxide of Chromium (W&N series 1) I O

Viridian PG 18   ASTM   l

I have Viridian (Winton) I T.

Viridian is a very permanent blue green, which has become somewhat less popular since Pthalo Green was introduced. Chromium is toxic if inhaled and is a suspected carcinogen.

• Viridian (W&N series4) I T
• Viridian (M Graham) I T

Convenience greens based on Viridian:

• Cadmium Green Pale (W&N series 4) I O = PG18 + PY35 (cad yellow)

Cobalt Green PG 50

Cobalt titanate green is a very lightfast, semi-opaque blue green, with low tinting strength. Differences in the proportion of aluminum, nickel or zinc in the crystal cause a range of hues, from turquoise (the pure form) to yellow-green. Cobalt is toxic if inhaled or ingested. Handprint says,

The teal and blue green shades of PG50 are among my favorite paints. The pastel quality is not added but integral to the pigment, which make interesting whitened mixtures with violets, blues, and greens. The teal blue alone provides bright, light greens with cadmium lemon (PY3) or copper azomethine (PY129), can be used to whiten and dull cadmium yellow deep (PY35) into an unusual “naples yellow,” mixes with phthalo green BS (PG7) to make a lovely emerald green, mixes well with cobalt blue (PB28) to mimic the cloudy green tone of cerulean blues, provides an incomparable greenish blue glow in sky washes and landscape foundation tints, and makes a gorgeous soft violet gray when mixed with a dark bluish red quinacridone (PR122 or PV19)… The PG50 green pigments are relatively flat, often granulating, and yet have a subtle, unique color quality. Using them has helped me to see new avenues of design and color composition. I urge you to give them a look: as relatively novel paints, they have interesting potential, worth investigating.

• Cobalt Turquoise Light (W&N series 4) I O

Cobalt Green Dark PG26

Cobalt green dark is an opaque, blue green pigment with excellent lightfastness. Notable for its very grayed color, it approaches a greenish black in masstone, and can be used (in the same way as charcoal or ivory black) to tint yellows into dull green. Handprint says,

PG26 is an excellent dark middle green for an “earth palette” of dull paints; it produces an interesting smoky slate gray when mixed with a touch of venetian red and applied in a diluted wash, and is a very effective paint for dry pine forest or oak tree foliage (in trees represented at a distance, the pigment granulation creates the effect of clumping branches). For most other painting purposes, it is not a very versatile pigment.

• Cobalt Chromite Green (W&N series 4) I O
• Cobalt Green PG26 + PG50 (W&N series 5) I SO

Terre Verte PG 23

Terre Verte is a weak pigment made from greenish clays; the colour differs depending on the clay’s origin.

• Terre Verte PG23 + PG18 (Viridian) (W&N series 1) I T

Other Greens

Prussian Green

• Prussian Green PY110 + PB15 (w7N series 2) I T

Sap Green

I have  Sap Green PY110 + PB15 (W&N series 2) I T, however it is now series 4 so the formula may have changed.

Other sap green:

• Sap Green Permanent PG7 + PY129 + PBk 9 (M Graham) I T

Olive Green
Olive Green is usually not green at all, but a mixture of yellow and black:

• Olive Green PY129 + PY110 + PBk9 (M Graham) I T
• Olive Green PY110 + PBk6 (W&N series2) I T

Hooker’s Green

There is a Hooker’s Green pigment, PG8, but with a poor lightfastness rating it is not generally used in paints. Neither W&N nor M Graham offers Hookers’ Green oil paints, but where it are available it is usually a convenience mixture.

Start #4

30 minutes goes so quickly! But it’s getting easier for me to see the colours in a reference photo,  and I’m beginning to feel slightly more confident about how to mix them. Of course, that confidence is sometimes misplaced – I don’t always get a good colour match with my mixes. The greens in this one are not great if compared directly to the original, but I found it much easier to recognize warm/cool, blue/yellow differences, so I’m counting that as progress. One thing I am consistently getting wrong is the sky; it’s always too dark. Which led me to dig back through my bookmarks until I found James Gurney’s helpful Sky Blue post from almost two years ago. There’s so much information there it’s going to take me a while to process it all!

Start #3

Here’s #3 of the 100 starts recommended by Kevin Macpherson. The reference photo came from the same Weekend Drawing Event as my start #2. It was painted in about 25 minutes using the secondary palette that I’ve been experimenting with.

The first thought that popped into my head when I saw the photo of the painting above was that the phthalo green certainly glows through! More in the photo than in real life, although I did get the mountain too green-grey. Other than that, though, I’m reasonably happy with it. Especially with the values, in the black and white photo on the left.

More Messing About

Yesterday was another day of just messing about. I experimented with conté this time, just to see what it can do. The nude is an exercise from a book and was done on newsprint; it doesn’t look quite this streaky in real life. The vase was just doodled from my imagination.

I like the way conté brings skin to life; I think I’d like to try it in a portrait. Unfortunately, I have to miss my portrait drawing class tomorrow due to a meeting at work that I really can’t skip. With luck it will finish early enough to allow a quick trip to the art store for some more paper, with time left over to draw.

January Review & February Plan

A month ago, I set my goal for the year:

I will make a point of investing time in myself and my art almost every day. And that is as specific as I’m going to get with my goals for now. The question I need to answer at the end of the month will not be “Did I complete item X?”. It will be, “Did I make progress toward becoming an artist?”

So did I do that in January? Yes, I think so.

There have not been hugely dramatic improvements in my work. I can’t show a before and after comparison to astound you with my newfound brilliance! Much of the change this month has been in the form of new knowledge that is beginning to percolate beneath the surface, and will eventually (I hope) work its way onto the canvas or paper.

But I did spend time several days each week on art. Here’s some of what I spent that time on:

• Value scales – grey & colour
• Value studies - grey and monotone
• Colour palette charts – split primary, secondary
• Simultaneous contrast
• Portrait class – week 1, 2, 3, and 4 plus 2 for charcoal practice and a self-portrait
• Pigment studies – yellow, red, blue
• Colour mixing practice – 1, 2, 3 and #1 & 2,  of 100 starts

And I made progress in seeing. Seeing colour – I saw colour in snow for the first time! – and seeing subtle changes in value. I made some progress in getting those subtleties onto paper, too; I am becoming much more comfortable using charcoal, a medium that I had never used successfully before. I still have a very long way to go, but I’ve made a start.

So the January report card from my Art School at Home: B.

The plan for February: more of the same. I’ll continue to focus on colour and colour mixing. I’m going to do several more “starts“. I want to find ways to sneak some art into times when there isn’t enough time for art, starting with keeping sketchbooks in the car and my locker at work so I can draw during coffee breaks and while waiting to pick up people.

Secondary Palette

Lately I’ve been experimenting with some new colours, based on the secondary palette recommended on Handprint.com. The colours I’ve used are:

• Azo Yellow (, M Graham, PY151 & PY74)
• Winsor Orange (= Pyrrole orange, PO73)
• Quinacridone Magenta (PR122)
• French Ultramarine (PB29)
• Phthalo Blue (PB15)
• Winsor Green YS (= Phthalo green, PG36)

Compared to the split-primary palette (left), this palette produces beautifully saturated mixed colours, especially greens and purples. It also makes some nice neutrals, and a near-black when the magenta and green are mixed. Comparing the two charts also convinces me that the $5 or so I invested in 1/4″ & 1/2″ masking tape was money well spent; look how much nicer the new charts look!

In addition to the chart above, I did some three-step mixtures, shown below (i.e., the first column of the first chart shows yellow in row 1, orange in row 5, with three different mixtures of those colours in between. The bottom two squares are two of those mixtures with white added.)

Portrait Class Week 4

This week’s model was a lovely young girl who has just been accepted into art college. She had a delicate, very young looking face that seemed easy to draw – or perhaps it was just that I forgot my glasses and couldn’t see the hard-to-draw parts! She was an excellent model, too, holding her pose beautifully.