Kadie Redux

On the last day of the Angelhart workshop, I decided that I would apply the techniques to my Kadie portrait -- the first portrait I had ever painted, which I finished in the spring of 2009.

Well, let's just say that what I did at the workshop doesn't merit sharing. I got the shadow areas too opaque too quickly, and tossed the painting as a false start.

So when I got home, I decided to start again.


Here are the early stages of the painting. The original painting was a more traditional head-and-shoulders image and included her left hand as she was holding it up (I think she was in the process of waving goodbye when I snapped the reference photo). For this exercise, I cropped to just her face. I never liked how her hand came out in the original. It was badly drawn and out of proportion to her face.

The face washes are mostly built with quin gold, quin coral and perinone orange, all pigments that Angelhart heavily relies on for building skin tones.

These are pigments from Daniel Smith, which first I worried about because I thought they were so much more expensive. Turns out, when you compare the same-size tube, they're not any more expensive than Winsor & Newton. It's just that W&N offers pigments in 5 ml tubes, so instinctively you think that paying $13.44 for a 15 ml tube of Daniel Smith Cobalt Blue is terrible. In fact, the 14 ml tube of W&N Cobalt Blue costs more -- $15.72 (priced at www.dickblick.com).



Here I am still building up skin tones and adding darks to help me gauge values.



And here's pretty much where I am right now. I've done a bit more work since this image was taken, but it's been nearly two weeks since I last touched any of my brushes. I hope to get back into the groove a little bit this weekend. I've got a lot to do on her hair (which is very different than the approach I took with the original), and I think I've got to lighten some areas around her face.

I'm really struggling with trying to make colors bold enough to be seen from across a room, but also work when seen from only a short distance. I guess that's where working on large pieces is a benefit. You can eliminate the "close-up" view from the equation because you can only process the image from a distance.

Angelhart workshop

Days and days after the close of the workshop, and I finally get around to talking about what a wonderful experience it was!

Jane Paul Angelhart, whose work can be seen at www.angelhart-portraits.com, led our 11-person class through a couple of demonstration portraits, stressing color mixing, glazing, and "mapping" -- what she terms the facial details you draw with your brush directly on the paper.

In essence, she explains, she goes about portraits in reverse. Most of the time, watercolorists are instructed to lay down large washes at the start, work from light to dark, and develop the details later in the work.

For portraits, however, Jane argues for going into the details at the onset, particularly in the areas of the eyes, nose and mouth. Her method, she believes, allows her to capture the subject's likeness at an early stage, giving her the confidence to apply those larger washes.

Her glazing techniques also use those initial detailed areas as "roadmaps." They don't disappear under a light skin-tone wash, so they help guide her through the development of the facial structure as she builds up layers of glowing colors.

Her palette is also a point she stresses. Most of the colors are from Daniel Smith, and nearly all are transparent. As Jane puts it, muddy colors make mud. (Her website includes a link to her complete palette if you'd like to learn more. Look under the "DVD" link and click on her palette at the bottom of that page.)

I didn't get all the the pigments prior to the class, but I got the basics, and Jane was more than willing to share a squirt of her paints to help us see how she achieves such glowing colors. I've already built a wish list to pick up some more of the paints sometime soon.

Here's an example of one of the structured demos Jane provided:






These small works (about 7x10 inches) are not in perfect sequence because they are live demo pieces Jane works on during her classes, but they show that progression of mapping features first, then adding some darks to help gauge values.

Jane also advocates for mixing colors on the paper rather than on the palette, laying pigments next to one another and letting them blend. Controlling the amount of water in the brush matters immensely in this sort of paint application, so she regularly blots her brush with a terrycloth towel to avoid unexpected backruns, etc.

Jane also cautions that too many blues and purples applied too early can deaden skin tones. She applies bright reds and oranges, along with greens as a neutral tone, and only later goes into the cool blues and purples.

The avoidance of blues and purples was the issue that hampered me most. I so badly wanted to dive into some cobalt blue when perplexed by a shadow area. But, as you can see above, Jane has depicted beautiful shadows and highlights across the young girl's face without resorting to those kind of color choices.


Here, several class participants look over our versions of Jane's demo. For a group generally inexperienced with portraiture, we had many positive outcomes with this demo! Click on the photo to see a larger version of the image. My version is to the far right, sans hair and background.


Here's a closer view of where I got on this demo. I was being very meticulous on layering light washes of color to achieve the right effect, so I didn't make a lot of progress.

The last day of the workshop, Jane encouraged us to bring in our own materials -- whether a failed painting from the past, a photograph, etc. I decided I would try my Kadie portrait again.

You may remember Kadie. I completed her early in 2009, and she was my first attempt at a portrait. I was very proud of her at the time, but now I'm not so happy with her given all the new ideas I have on glazing, shadow colors, etc. (To see my work-in-progress discussions of Kadie, search for the "Kadie"blog post label in the list to the left.)

Kadie 2.0 is nearly half finished. I'll post images of her progress soon.


And here is Jane Paul Angelhart! At the end of a busy last day, Jane went over the displayed works with everyone (mine is behind her head -- look for the bright green sunglasses). She encouraged everyone to keep painting, and also encouraged us to stay in touch with one another.

As I said, it was a wonderful workshop, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to meet Jane.

Workshop!

Well, it's been a busy month so far (thus no new posts), and I've just completed an amazing workshop with Jane Paul Angelhart on watercolor portraits.

I'm not a regular "workshopper" as some artists are. I've confined myself to about one per year for the last six years, and they've all been somewhat regional, so my workshop observations and experiences are limited. That said, I think this was the most amazing three days I've ever spent with a brush in hand.

Jane, I think, has really opened up some ideas for me. For this workshop, the approach to energetic glazing (my description) was directly related to portraiture, but I'm already thinking about how to inject the philosophy into other paintings.

Again, it was an amazing three days, and I want to thank Janet Lee Wright for making it all possible.

Finally finished

Well, he's finished. I'm sure there are all sorts of things I could do to tweak this or that, but to be honest, I'm getting tired of him (the painting, not Zack, of course). I've decided to call this a successful stepping stone and let him be. I'll do better the next time, I'm sure.

In a related topic, that next time may be sooner rather than later. Janet Wright, the teacher of the portrait class, contacted everyone in great excitement a few days ago because she was on the verge of landing Jane Paul Angelhart for a portrait workshop in Harrisonburg, Va. How this all came to be is a long story, but the short of it was that Janet needed to find 10 participants in just a few days to pull the workshop off.

So, I'll be taking the Angelhart workshop on May 20-22 somewhere on the campus of Eastern Mennonite University. It's only a little over an hour from here, so I'll drive back and forth. Hope to get even more advice, and maybe I can improve on my next painting of Zack. But I've got to work on one of little sister Avery first!

Hair!

I'm getting close. I'm going to avoid going back into his face and concentrate on trying to get his hair and his shirt set. But I feel like I'm getting close.....

The Eyes Have It (Sort of)

I've really been struggling with Zack's eyes, as I had feared. I alternate between panic attacks and satisfaction. In the end, I keep fiddling with them. Good thing Arches paper is tough.

Happy so far

Here's my progress to this point on my portrait of Zack. I'm trying to darken some of the areas along his jawline, so that's why it may seem uneven from one side to the next. I'm also trying to blunt the sharpness of his chin a bit.

I should also post the photo reference so you can see how close I am to capturing a likeness so far:


I'm really worried about his eyes. They are deeply shadowed in the photograph, but, based on my preliminary value drawing, if I try to match the deep shadows, he appears to have black eyes and bruises. So I think I'm going to have to find a happy medium to make his eyes work.

But the larger question still looms. Does it look like him? Sometimes I think, "yes." But then I find something that's not quite right. And, as I learned with the value drawing, what likeness I've captured can easily be lost with some ineptly placed values.

AWS awards

Saw that the American Watercolor Society had announced their award winners for this year. Two of the top winners are among my favorite contemporary watercolorists.

John Salminen was the Gold Medal winner, and Dean Mitchell was awarded the Silver Medal.

John Salminen's work first attracted my attention when I saw the painting "Cadillac Sign, Times Square" in an art magazine. It had won first place in the National Watercolor Society exhibit that year, and I was amazed at the subject matter and the painter's approach to composition and design. His winning AWS painting this year is "Morning Fog."

Most of John's paintings reflect similar urban, fractured scenes, which are held together by judicious value-based compositions. He's prolific, regularly recognized for his work in national exhibitions and magazines, and keeps a busy teaching schedule.

Dean Mitchell caught my eye when I was looking through the winning paintings in the now disbanded Arts for the Parks exhibition (the competition in recent years has been been folded into the PaintAmerica organization).

I can't be certain of the specific painting (and the old competition website is no longer available) but I think it was "Rustic Elegance" (click on the link, then scroll down the page and click on the thumbnail to see the painting in a larger format).

For those who know me, you also know of my love for architectural elements in paintings. Edward Hopper famously said "Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house." Well, sunlight on the side of a house transfixes me, and Dean Mitchell's ability to transform that light into lyrical passages stopped me cold.

More of Mitchell's work can be found at one of his representing galleries, Bryant Galleries of New Orleans, and there you can see more of his amazing landscapes and architectural paintings, but you can also see the scope of his work, including his gift for figures and portraits.

His winning AWS painting for this year is "Sunshine in New Orleans."

The AWS site is www.americanwatercolorsociety.org

Another great piece of news from the AWS is that the traveling exhibition of the show will come to this area! From March 11 to May 8, 2011, the show can be seen at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, Md. Can't wait to see it!

Portrait Class

I attended a watercolor portrait class this past weekend in the Shenandoah Valley.

Sponsored by VECCA (Valley Educational Center for the Creative Arts), the class was taught by Janet Wright. She said this was the second time she had taught a portrait class (the first being with the Shenandoah Valley Watercolor Society, based in Harrisonburg, Va.) For this being only her second time, I thought Janet did a wonderful job, and I learned quite a bit about mixing colors for portraits in a very short time.

Here is Janet working on a painting during the demo portion of the class. In the background are some of her paintings that she brought as examples of her work.



Here are two more examples of Janet Wright's work (sorry about the reflections from the overhead lights). I'm really partial to the portrait on the left because I love the loose background, and I love the challenge she posed for herself in completing the piece. The painting is done using only three colors, a blue, red and yellow, which are visible at the top in the flowing background. All of the colors are mixed from that triad.

I'm working on a painting of my nephew Zack as a result of the class. Prior to the class, Janet asked us to complete a sketch of our subject and transfer it to our watercolor paper.

In addition to my outline sketch, I also worked on a value drawing before the class met. It's still not finished, but it's close. I'll post it when it's done.

The class began with a discussion of everyone's sketches, and tips for approaching some of the difficult areas. Then Janet began work on a painting while we all gathered around and watched. I paid close attention to how she mixed her flesh tones, and how she blended the paint around the face of her subject. Everyone nearly gasped at the intensity of her first washes, but she emphasized that being bold is essential. Tentative washes lead to tentative paintings.

After she finished her demo, we all went back to our own drawings, and tried to emulate what Janet had done. I know I struggled at the onset, but after being convinced I had ruined my painting within the first few strokes, I got into something of a rhythm and made some good progress.

I didn't finish a lot of detail in the painting of Zack during the class, but I think it was a good start, and I'm amazed at some of the colors to this point. Janet said she bases her palette on the palette of Jane Paul Angelhart, which is made up of many bright quincridones and other bright, transparent pigments. To see some of Angelhart's work, see her Web site: http://www.angelhart-portraits.com/

Here's where I am to this point:


Now, let me also say a few words about the group that hosted the class: VECCA is a nonprofit organization that has been working to provide arts education and art opportunities for several years. Based in Woodstock, Va., many of the organization's classes are held at the Old Edinburg School in Edinburg, Va.

To see VECCA's Web site, including more classes and workshops planned over the summer, click here.

Mt. Hebron Cemetery

I wandered up the street at lunchtime earlier this week and positioned myself on a comfortable bench in the Old Lutheran Cemetery portion of Mt. Hebron Cemetery in Winchester. From this vantage point, I sketched the striking Mt. Hebron gatehouse.

The gatehouse, dressed in locally quarried bluestone, was designed by architects James Stewart Barney and Henry Otis Chapman of New York, the same men who created the stunning Beaux-Arts Handley Library a few blocks away.

The design of the gatehouse, however, certainly does not match the flamboyance of the Beaux-Art library. A recent application to the National Register of Historic Places describes many of the gatehouse's elements to be Chateauesque, with additional nods to medieval castles, complete with decorative arrow slits and rounded turrets.

I completed this sketch in about 20 minutes. I don't think could have focused much longer given the blinding sunlight that afternoon.