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• I’ve been very busy with work, helping to raise a three year old, and taking an online graduate course.
• I’ve been finishing up the large commission I started over the summer, and I have allowed that to kind of block my ability to do other painting. That’s just about done, however, so it’s time to move on.

I had a whole day off today, so I took the opportunity to start a new painting.

This is “Layover.” It’s 20 × 20”, oil on linen primed with lead white, toned with red earth and raw umber. This is a monochromatic underpainting—a grisaille—which will be glazed over once it’s dry. I used various mixtures of Doak’s flake 1c and Natural Pigments black earth (an iron oxide black).

The key is a little too dark for optimal glazing (since glazes tends to darken what they cover). That means I’ll need to paint into the glaze with white to get the lights up.

I’ll keep you posted on this, and I’ll try not to let such a long time pass before putting up other stuff. Unfortunately, posting will probably be intermittent for the foreseeable future.

This is “Newbury Street,” oil on panel, 20 × 20”. Many artists shy away from the square picture format, because it can be hard to achieve a dynamic composition within such a stable frame. I worked on overcoming that within a simple “bullseye” composition with a bit of tension between the jacket and its shadow. I think I succeeded fairly well with that.

The panel, which I had primed with lead white, had been curing for more than six months. Different sources suggest different amounts of time to let an oil ground cure; anywhere from a couple of weeks to several months. I can say that this well-cured surface was excellent to work on.

Click on a thumbnail to see the full-sized image.

I started with an underpainting using a mixture of raw umber mixed with a small amount of Studio Products Tuscan red (a bright iron oxide pigment). Unusually for me, I used the wipeout technique for the underpainting. I did that by smearing on a bunch of thinned paint in any given area, then wiping it back. I used a mixture of mineral spirits and linseed oil, with a bit of turps. Then I used a bristle bright brush to wipe the paint back. A bright is good for this because the short bristles allow for easy scrubbing. The idea is to wipe the paint away, letting the white ground show through in the lights and letting the paint stay thick in the darks.

Normally, I avoid the wipe out technique because I don’t think that thinning paint down a lot is a good idea—it can generate a paint layer that is not properly bound in the oil vehicle. However, because the oil primed surface was smooth and not absorbent, I found that I only needed to thin the paint down just a bit in order to use the wipe out method effectively. It allowed me to easily get the structure of the painting down quickly and easily, and to correct errors easily using a rag dipped in thinner. Because there was some linseed oil in the thinner, the final result was a surface that was clearly well-bound, as I could not easily scratch it with a fingernail or rub any pigment off.

Once that was dry (within a day, due to the siccative properties of the raw umber), I painted in the background and shadow. That took a few days to dry. Then I applied a very thin layer of Studio Products glazing medium to the surface of the painting and began working my way over the painting, attempting to paint something close to the final effect in each area before moving on to the next. That took several painting sessions.

Not all of these photos are great. I’ll try to get a good final and post that later.

Here’s the initial underpainting—a dead coloring layer:

Next step, slowly working up something close to the final form of the painting, in small sections:

Much of the front dress completed:

More detail work:

Here’s where the “White Shirt” painting is at. What I’ve done is finish initial rendering of each area of the shirt. I found that the hues were uneven—I am still learning to manage near-neutrals across relatively large areas of a painting. What I tried was to glaze transparent yellow oxide across bluer shadow areas, which evened out hues somewhat, but the overall painting was unconvincingly yellow-orange. I had also over-rendered much of the shirt, with too broad a range in value between darks and lights.

This was a perfect time to apply a velatura.

Taking a hint from Tad Spurgeon, I mixed up a batch of putty. This was calcite (ground marble dust) mulled with walnut oil and a bit of stand oil. The resulting mixture was a dull grey with the consistency of, well, oil paint. Putty is a medium used to increase the transparency of paint, since the calcite is essentially invisible in an oil vehicle. This is better than adding a lot of oil or resin, as the calcite/oil mixture is as strong and as resistant to discoloration as oil paint.

I mixed the putty with lead white (Doak’s flake 1C) in approximately equal amounts. Then I added a very small amount of neutral gray paint (ivory black and burnt umber) which I had previously tubed. I now had a very light gray, relatively translucent mixture.

I oiled out the surface of the painting with a thin layer of walnut oil, which is very slippery and less yellowing than linseed. I applied the gray mixture to the surface. Initially, it looked awful—my careful painting was covered with flat gray. With a stiff bristle flat, I started working at adjusting the thickness of the velatura layer, pulling the underpainting out. I found that it was effective to moisten the brush with a bit of walnut oil. It took awhile, but eventually the underpainting began to show through, with the value range compressed toward the gray value of the velatura and the hue pulled toward neutral.

It needs a bit of work once the velatura layer has dried to restate a few highlights and dark accents, but overall this was a successful exercise.

I messed up the right sleeve. As was painfully obvious the next day, but somehow didn’t hit me at the time, the shadow color in the right sleeve is too green and too low in chroma. (This may not be clear in the photo you are looking at, as these are fairly subtle color distinctions.) Shadows elsewhere are in the orange and yellow range, assisted by the earth red tone I had applied on top of the glue-chalk gesso primer. My plan is to let let that section dry completely while I work on the rest, glaze the shadows with transparent yellow oxide and transparent red oxide, and work into that base in order to correct the color.

Other than that, I like it so far, which is rare for me at this point in a painting. It still needs a bunch of fabric detail and the hangar needs to be painted in, but it’s basically progressing well.

“Bag and Bulb,” oil on lead-primed canvas, 16 × 20”.

I set up a still life with two old sneakers. I spent some time arranging them and then drew out some quick compositional sketches on 3 × 5” cards. The panel I’m painting on is an odd size—20 × 7.5”—so I want a dynamic value structure that will pull the eye through the painting. After about 10 fast drawings and some moving sneakers and shoelaces around I think I have something satisfactory. It’s hard to overstate the necessity of this compositional step. Just painting some random arrangement, without consideration of how the eye will be moved around the composition, is unlikely to result in a pleasing painting that communicates what the artist is trying to say.

The panel is hardboard primed with lead white. I don’t want to paint on a white surface (it’s harder to judge values), so I mix some burnt umber and raw sienna together, add a little spirits of turpentine, and wipe it over the panel with a rag. Then I start to draw with a 1” flat brush using the same paint mixture. The goal is to get spatial relationships right. That mostly means a lot of measuring distances and angles. Every point needs to be at the correct angle from every other point. I do a lot of holding up the edge of the brush in front of me to get the angle of a line and then comparing that angle to what’s on the drawing. It also helps to hold the back tip of the brush in two fingers to let it fall plum, then comparing whether one point falls on a correct vertical from another point. Same with horizontals.

I’m not concerned with making a detailed drawing in paint. The information I’m trying to put down is about the overall structure of large masses and important points. There is a complex structure of laces that I’ll have to get accurately later, but putting them in now would only confuse things. I am only working with one dark color of paint here. One of the great things about working on a lead primed surface is that it is not absorbent. That means that I can easily make corrections by wiping with a finger or with a rag. I make those over and over as I compare angles and lengths from one point to another.

When I’m done with the drawing it doesn’t look like much. There’s a lot of detail missing. It’s not a tonal sketch in that it consists of a lot of lines drawn with the brush, but some large light/dark areas have been indicated. Mostly it’s just about boundaries.

Then I begin to apply paint to the areas around the subjects. It’s just a neutral at this point, since it’s an initial thin layer and is intended only to be dead coloring. The shift from dark to light as the surface goes back is much stronger here than in real life, as a way to create a sense of depth. The mixture consists of my regular lean neutral dark mixture (burnt umber and natural Mars black) and flake white.

After I’ve laid the paint down, I do a lot of smearing with my fingers. I don’t want any texture in this paint layer. I also want to avoid hard edges generally. So I blend and smear basically the whole surface. I deliberately pull the paint inward over the sneaker edges I’ve established, so that I can then paint back over that layer as I put in the subjects.

That’s where I end the first painting session.

NOW! You are welcome to join.

The beautiful female figure has been a subject of interest to artists since the beginning of history.  Almost every great artist is represented by examples of his impression of the figure.

Learning how to draw is not difficult. How well you’ll do  depends on continuous practice and perseverance. You needn’t learn anatomy — leave it to doctors. When drawing the figure, we are interested, mainly, in planes and form. Drawing of the figure is not an exact science. I can only say, “This is how I do it — try it this way” And you will, in time, find your own way that will suit you the best.

Here’s an example of a figure drawing. Copy it or interpret it any way you wish. You cannot stifle your own originality.

A basic proportional scale for the figure is measured in heads as units. There are seven for classic proportions– a head, from chin to middle of the chest, to the belly area, to the middle of palms/mid hams, to the knees, and from knees to heels. When drawing a figure, remember that it doesn’t just hang in the air: establish surroundings that it occupies.

I used sepia Cretacolor crayon which I don’t have to fix. If you are using a pastel or other type of pencil in initial sketch, you’ll have to fix it with a commercial fixative such as Krylon to avoid smearing.

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p> Drawing instruction references: Fritz Willis “The Nude”, Charles Bargue: with the collaboration of Jean-Léon Gérôme: Drawing Course.

Before proceeding to flesh palette, I recommend a tonal drawing using just Burnt Sienna and white to establish darks, middle tones, and lights. It will take about 2 weeks for the tonal painting to dry, so please take tonal painting seriously and bring it to completion, including a background. To make sure the layer has dried, take a piece of napkin and put some linseed oil on it — if the paint rubs off the layer needs more time. To speed up the drying time, you can place a painting outdoors/on a balcony.