Final on Ingres

Here is the final version of my dad and my eldest son. It's approximately 9 in x 11 in, graphite on bristol board coated with acyrlic paint. It marks the end of my Ingres study for April.

Things I learned from Ingres:

• Subtle lines make a big impact
• Hard pencils can go very dark on a coated paper
• You can't choose how you will be remembered
  

Things I learned while studying Ingres:

• Not accepting what other people appreciate about your art can make you appear cranky and ungrateful.
• You can stop working on something if it isn't going well, but you might learn something if you persevere.

And finally, I'm very thankful for this blog. I could easily be swept away with "spring cleaning" projects around here and then I would be a very grumpy, overwhelmed woman all summer long.

Looks like the FineLine Artists Group Project for May is James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

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.

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.
  

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! :-)