Ingres Final Project - WIP

That awkward post title is supposed to mean: this is my "final" for the Ingres project this month but it is not finished yet! :-) Anyway, this is from a reference of my dad showing my eldest how to write. My dad is a great crossword puzzler. I am a mediocre puzzler. So when he visits, we do the NY Times each day for fun. James was jealous that I was getting Grandpa's attention during these daily sessions - so he wanted his own puzzle to put letters in. And, of course, Grandpa needed to show him how to make the letters...

This is on bristol board, again coated in white acrylic paint. I certainly like the feel of it and the range of values that I can get from an H pencil on it. That bit of the table at the bottom came in so dark, I was really pleased with that. The paint also brings a nice texture to the work. I purposely slapped paint on this time - not worrying about direction or evenness.

I will try and locate some sort of coated paper (either called Ingres or not) during my next round of the art shops. And, I'll do a summary post on Ingres next time, with a final of the above work.

Blogging is good for you

This picture is not a good likeness and there is alot about it that jumps out at me as wrong. In fact, as I was working on it, I desperately wanted to stop. But the other part of my brain kept reminding me that I had nothing else to post today and that I don't want to get in the habit of neglecting posting (that leads to neglecting drawing!) So I kept going. And my marks became more furious and less thought out. This, of course, steered it further away from the original.

BUT, and here's where blogging regularly and feeling forced to put something up is good for you, I really liked how the values came in, how it all blended and came together in a stylistic sense. I feel like I learned something here:

• Coated paper with a hard pencil brings a unique effect
• I can build with quick hatching, but with a few more layers, it blends - nicely
• As well, the above process does not "erase" individual marks (make them invisible) which is something I really like in art. (I like being reminded that I'm not looking at a photo.)

So, I'm glad that I had this blog post to make today - even if I feel a little embarrassed with the post. I think I learned something stylistically today. Hopefully I'll learn something more mechanically tomorrow! :-)

Julia WIP

This was just a quick sketch I did while waiting for my paint to dry on another Ingres' experiment. Her sister will be on her right, eventually. This is part of that earlier commission I mentioned. I was thinking of doing the final versions on a coated paper. We'll see.

Anyway, the likeness isn't really there I don't think. And I must do something with that tongue. She was laughing in that cute baby way in the reference and she doesn't have teeth, but I've rather made her sticking her tongue out at the viewer!

Ingres' Drawing Materials

I found a great little article yesterday on Ingres' drawing materials. Apparently, he used really hard pencils and coated paper. (You can buy something called Ingres paper today.) This gave his drawings a special look - and as the above article states, therein may lie his magic.

For my readers who aren't artists, a quick word about hard and soft pencils. Basically, the lead in artists pencils is not all the same. Most US students are used to "number 2" pencils. That is in the middle of the spectrum. There are harder pencil leads, they have more of a silvery tone and can take alot of pressure and remain at a point. The softer leads are darker in tone (more towards black than silver) and "mush" under pressure. A line from a hard pencil will not smear easily, a similar line from a soft pencil will smear easily.

I have noticed in looking at Ingres' work that he made great dark lines, but they were still very fine. I have been drawing with softer pencils this month and the lines are not precise enough. I had used a hard pencil when I copied a few portraits last year, but they came out very light - as you can see here.

The copy of Ingres' portrait of Merry-Joseph Blondel above is done on coated paper. It is not the same as Ingres' paper, it is Bristol board coated lightly with white acrylic paint. Hopefully you can see the difference in that and the marks made on plain Bristol board in the second image. It is rather striking in real life. And as an ender, I loved the texture and feel of the pencil marking on the coated paper.

Ingres and Drawing/Painting

approx 8" x 10"
pencil on Canson paper

I think this is just about done. I may do a few touch-ups to the hair on both and the background. But, I'll give it a few days and look again with fresh eyes before I do anything else.

At the beginning of the month I promised a little bit of a discussion about drawing and painting. This is a huge area so you can believe that I'm just going to sketch some broad outlines. There is a great treatment of this in Sherry Camhy's The Art of the Pencil.

In Ingres' day, drawing was just considered a prep to painting. No one really turned out drawings for show then. All drawing was just to get to the perfect painting. Somewhere I read he was actually revolutionary in this regard, as he sold his pencil portraits (I don't know if that is true or not).

This is why Ingres took so much offense when people sought after his drawings. His paintings were the real work, the drawings were just to get food on the table. Anyone in his art world would have looked down on him for building a reputation with drawing. I mean, do you think today's NBA stars really respect the guys who only just warm up for each game and never really play?

Of course, things have changed since then. Now, as Camhy shows, it is extremely difficult to even define drawing and painting exclusively. They are more like ends of a spectrum. For instance, one often sees works in pencil today that are basically paintings done in graphite with a pencil. As well, there are outlines done with a paintbrush on a canvas that seem more like a drawing.

Of course, the interesting question is, if Ingres lived today, would he be happy being known as that pencil portraitist?

A couple of links for you:

• American Artist article on Ingres
• Quotes from Ingres (American Artist magazine)
  
• Fort Worth Main Streets Arts Festival - one of the artists is J.D. Hilberry (he was the one I had in mind when I was talking about paintings done in pencil) - there is a nice blurb from each artist on the website.
  

Precious Nap Time WIP

Sorry for the "vacation" from posting. I could say I was busy, which would be true. I could say I was sick, which was true. But I could also say that I was grumpy and that was the main reason that I didn't post! Nobody needs more whining in their life - you should feel spared.

Anyway, this is for a commission that I'm working on.

The challenges:

• Make the grandma the grandma and not just "old"
• Make the baby a tender slumbering baby and not just an unrecognizable blob
• Grandma's sweater is in the middle, this can't be a distraction
• Do something with that upper right corner (in the reference it's a few branches from a tree, but they would look odd if included - especially as I don't want to draw the Christmas pattern on the lady's sweater.)

How I'll meet the challenges in the next draft:

• Hopefully I've caught wisdom there in Grandma's chin and not just age.
• The baby blob needs work, better values and stronger lines
• I'm hoping if I pump up the lines in the profiles, the sweater will fade in significance
• Hopefully a dark to light blur will do the trick in that upper right corner

I hope this week to do my post on drawing vs. painting and Ingres.

Ingres WIP

This is my copy of Ingres' portrait of Nicholas-Marie Gatteaux done in 1828. I'm not quite finished yet so it's a WIP. I haven't been able to locate an online image of the real thing and I don't want to violate any copyrights, so you'll just have to bear with me.

I chose this one to do because in the original Gatteaux has both a snarky expression on his face and generally looks like a nice man. It's an odd combination, but that is what makes it so intriguing. I think that "nice guy" impression is from his hands (which you can't see yet). They are very tenderly held and have a bit of gentle age to them. And then there's that snobby pursing of the lips....

As comparison, I have the face too thin and too old. I plan to finish the jacket and body and then go over the whole thing again, building values.

Have a good Friday everyone!

It takes concentration

And today, I just didn't have it. Ingres' portrait of Etienne Gonin does not resemble an alien quite as much as my copy above does. I drew one eye far too large. Then, I tried to erase it and just make do, but as you can tell, there is just something wrong under that right eye of his!

Here's an example of how things in a drawing are connected: If you cover his left eye, you get a half portrait of what looks like an 11 year old boy. If you cover his right eye, you get something that looks a bit like the man that Ingres drew. But take your hands away and the whole thing looks dreadful!

Looks like it's a good day for practicing making marks!

Mrs. Charles Gounod

Here's my copy of Ingres' portrait of Mrs. Gounod. My lady looks more "proper" than his does. His looks like a young, naive, not-entirely-beautiful-and-yet-not-entirely-ugly lady.

Enough of that. While I was doing this I observed that Ingres had incredible control of his pencil and himself. Just about every line that I saw had variable weight. None of the lines was entirely straight and none were of uniform width. This, I think, was a key to his genius in portraying clothing and flesh. I have noticed this trait in other portraits I've studied. For example, rarely is an eyelid of uniform width - generally they are heavier or "thicker" at the ends. ("Thicker" there meaning a heavier shadow.) Such a trick gives the eye a more spherical shape and shows that the eyelid is skin pulled over the ball-shaped eye. As I said, I've seen that elsewhere. But in the Ingres' portraits that I've really looked at, all of his lines are like that. (See Mrs. Gounod's left cheek for the effect.)

From that evidence, I then extrapolate the two observations above. One, that Ingres had incredible control of his pencil and was able to draw that sort of line of varied pressure and twist to points or chisel edges of his pencil. Secondly, I'm guessing that Ingres' had control of himself as well, because it takes a great deal of restraint to not go hog wild and slash fast and hard all over a portrait (especially once it is taking shape.)

One last note - that control over a pencil reminds me of Arthur Guptill's advice in Rendering in Pen and Ink. He has pages of marks that he recommends students practice making so that they can make any sort of mark on command and start and stop it exactly where they want (that's the tricky bit!) I've worked on those exercises over the years and they are tough. But, I've only ever done them in pen - interesting idea to try them in pencil. (BTW, that's a fabulous book. I reread it cover to cover every few years and glance through it often.)

Charles Gounod

This is a copy I did of Ingres' portrait of Charles Gounod. Charles Gounod was himself a composer and if you google him you can find info about him (something about opera, that's where I stopped.) They were friends. Ingres was a violin player and often played with Gounod. At Ingres' encouragement Gounod began sketching. Sounds like they had a wonderful friendship. The drawing referenced above was done in 1841. In 1859, Gounod brought his wife to Ingres for a companion drawing. You can see my copy of that tomorrow. I'll just remark that it was 18 years later, but you wouldn't know it looking at them. The couple look like they are brother and sister and were clearly drawn in the same manner. I don't know if his style didn't change in 18 years or it was deliberate on his part. But, it is interesting nonetheless.

I was hoping to give you links to the articles that contained some of the facts I mentioned yesterday. But, I can't find them tonight. Instead, here are some other links to his works, with a few biographies thrown in.

Here is a site built from a 1999 exhibition of his work in New York:

• Portraits by Ingres

Here's another site:

• Art Renewal

You can see a bunch of his work here (but it isn't organized all that well):

• Ingres Web Site

(Sorry for the weird formatting on this. The blogger editor is acting up and I'm tired of fighting with it. I'd rather go read my next installment in Anna Karenina!)

Ingres for April

It appears that the Fineline Artists are all too busy this month to do a little extra study (good on them, I hope to one day achieve such an artistic state!) So, I'm on my own this month. I checked back on my list of goals for the year...and I had listed doing a monthly study on Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867).

Briefly, he was a painter that met with some success in his lifetime. Today he is known for his pencil portrait drawings. To this day, they are amazing. He clearly had a handle on achieving a likeness. As a comparision, his style was more delicate than Sargent's swift hand. I will tell you more about him later on in the month.

He interests me for two reasons. First, I was just astounded with his skill and draftsmanship and felt I could learn alot. The image above is a copy I did of one of his works in Dec. 2006. Looking back at my copy now, I feel like it could be greatly improved on. To begin with, it's all in midtone values and totally lacks "punch". So one goal this month is to see if I can get closer to his expert draftsmanship but also gain "punch".

The second reason that he interests me is because he did so many pencil portraits and earned a living by them for a while. (While I am not in need a earning an entire living, I would certainly love to do pencil portraits for money.) Interestingly enough, he actually said that he despised doing them and considered himself a painter. A story goes that when people would knock on his door and ask if the man who does the pencil portraits was in he would respond that "no, a painter lives here." So there is both a personal interest and actually general interest in how his world viewed drawing vs painting and how today's art world views the two.

So, this month I look to gain some technical skills and do some art history type investigations. (Tomorrow I will include links to some of the sites that I've been looking at - but you could google him and find the same links yourself! :-)

That Same Lady Again - New Pencil

Well, I just couldn't resist doing a complete set, so here's the scarved lady again. This time in colored pencil, smaller - 2.5 in x 3.5 in. The colors didn't quite come out in the photo, they are a little bolder in real life, but you get the idea.

I can't believe I've spent nearly a week on her. But, it's been a great week. Here's what I've learned:

• Doing a "finished" graphite pencil version of a work is a great place to start on a project.
• The above step gives me confidence to move into more unchartered territory...color.
• Because of my enjoyment of "sloshing paint around", a painting can go good or bad quickly.
• Adding color to my work, as hard as it is proving to be is also proving to be a treasure worth digging for. I grew very excited as I colored in that scarf today. In the photo, the scarf is lovely and to try and express some of that beautiful deep red/purple pattern was thrilling!

More technically:

• My first layer of paint for the face in the acrylic version dried far too dark. Each subsequent layer, although opaque, was hindered because of that earlier choice. (Acyrlics do dry darker than when they are wet, I knew that - but knowledge isn't everything. Wisdom is applying what your knowledge to your situation!)
• My first "wash" for the face in the CP version was a pale green because I saw a real coolness to her skin tone. Then I went to bed and wondered if I had just made the same mistake twice (see above). Happily, I can report that the green wash was key in preventing her skin becoming too pink - she really has olive skin tone.
• In the CP version, removing color for highlights didn't work out as well for me as last time. In her face, this was because the skin tone was already so light. On her neck and chest, this was because I colored too hard (and so had more to remove) and the small size of the work made it hard to "lift out" color.

Well, that's it for me this week. Next week may be another portrait set like this one, or I may begin study on another artist, or something entirely different. Hmm, my rose bushes are bursting with blooms...

Painted Lady

Or rather, part of the scarved lady's face, namely her left eye. I had a go at painting her and well, it's a journey, right? This isn't all of it, but you've gotten the best of it, believe me. I have so much to learn about painting!

One thing I noticed when I was painting this was that I was thinking and making marks the way I would if I were holding a graphite pencil, therein lies a problem, methinks. This may be some of the problem I am having with colored pencils too. Each medium is different and has its own techniques.

For completeness, I may try and do a CP version of this same lady. It would be interesting to compare all three versions - you could see more of the mood that is inherent in each medium.

She's Finished

Here she is, finished. I didn't realize until I finished this that it is not entirely different from my Waterhouse project last month. (I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer!) On reflection, I think that I am finding a couple of favorite themes for me, the human face and draped cloth. I have always been fascinated by faces - what they convey and what they don't, the challenge of capturing a likeness, and generally how faces change over time. The cloth is a newer interest for me, it just seems magical to be able to create the strong impression that a cloth is draped on something - the weight of the material, how it changes in the light, and the subtly of it.

Portrait WIP

Here's a portrait I began this afternoon. It's from a reference photo on WetCanvas. There's more work to do but I thought I'd show the beginning anyway. Today was one of those tough days and by the time nap time rolled around I was ready for something comforting. A pencil portrait from a reference photo definitely feels comforting to me - thank you John Singer Sargent!

Enough chatter, off to finish my scarved lady.

In the garden

I mentioned before that I do one landscape project a year and this year is the lawn. A few weeks ago I reseeded the front. The last few days I have begun work on the backyard. It was a veritable jungle of weeds. I was heaving the lawn mower into the four foot tree-like weeds as if it were a battering ram. Yesterday I put down weed and feed and I am hoping for the best. I would like to just use organic lawn food (as I did in the front) for the safety of my children, but I think we need at least one dose of chemicals to contain the weeds.

These are photos from the front yard. In the middle of the top photo are the phlox that the boys and I planted yesterday to replace the lobelia that never made it last year. Other than being short they are not too different from the purple sage that surrounds them, but we've moved from artistic aims to drought tolerant/survival aims this year. Once that crape myrtle on the right gets taller it will look better.

The other photo is just one of the clumps of roses that have begun their journey on the other side of the front yard. I love those things. They grow really well in Texas and are a constant encouragement to me all season - on the bush and on the table.

With all this yard work, my art has been getting the short stick. Last night I just did what musicians would call "scale work." I just practiced making all sorts of marks in pen. But today I have no yard jobs and hope to get back to it.

Pressing Forward

Here's the Raeburn portrait again. It didn't come out as disasterous as it could have, but it's hardly something to love. That poor woman, I have made her terribly ugly and unlike her true self. But, you know, the shading on her face, neck, and dress are much better than the first application.

There should be a new project for April. Once it's announced I'll let you know and begin work.