CATEGORY: Art
SKILL: Oil Portrait Painting
MOVEMENT: Late 19th Century
REQUIREMENTS: Anatomy knowledge
TOOLS:
1. Easel
2. Palette
3. Palette knife
4. Palette Dipper
5. Hog's Hair Brushes
MATERIALS:
1. Fine/medium weave linen (grey/white)
2. Turpentine
3. Vine charcoal
4. Oil paints a) Lead white b) Mars yellow c) cadmium yellow d) Transparent gold ochre e) vermilion f) Mars red g) Venetian red h) Burnt sienna i) Rose madder j) Alizarin crimson k) Chrome orange l) Ultramarine blue m) Cobalt blue n) Viridian green o) Emerald green p) Raw umber q) Mars brown r) Ivory black
STUDIO REQUIREMENTS:
A studio with a north facing window to allow the sunlight to be constant with no changing direct sun beaming into the room. The artist stands far away from the model and easel for the sight size method. PROCEDURE:
1) Accurately place your masses with the charcoal, using the sight size method slightly under life-size. Then gently wipe a rag over the drawing, faintly showing where the lines have been.
2) Paint in the background about half an inch over the border of the adjoining tones. Aim for the true general value of the background, of the hair, and for the transition value between the two. "Paint with long sweeps, avoiding spots and dots ('little dabs')” Paint all the half tones quite thick and always paint one thing into another and, not side by side until they touch. (A half tone is the color not in highlight or in shadow. It is the true color of the object.)
3) Paint in the mass of hair, recovering the drawing and fusing the tones with the background.
4) For the face, lay in a middle flesh tone, light on one side and dark on the shadow side, always recovering the drawing, and most carefully fusing the flesh into the background. Paint flesh into background and background into flesh, until the exact quality is obtained, both in colour and tone so the whole resembles as wig maker's block.
5) Then paint the most marked and characteristic accents of the features in place and tone and drawing as accurately as possible. Paint deliberately into wet ground, testing your work by repeatedly standing well back, viewing it as a whole, a very important thing.
6) After this take up the subtler tones which express the retiring planes of the head, temples, chin, nose, and cheeks with neck, then the still more subtle drawing of mouth and eyes, fusing tone into tone all the time.
7) Until finally the highlights are laid in, without worrying whether the value is right.
This is the first sitting. The aim is not to allow any parts well done, to interfere with that principle of oneness, or unity of every part.
TUTORIAL: James Otto Allen
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lance Mayer, Gay Myers. American Painters on Technique, Keenewilson.com