For this exercise almost the first painting that came to mind was the Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals which I saw at the Wallace collection. To me this is a portrait of a mischievous character - he is telling me “guess what - these are not my real clothes”, or something like that, and a very interesting thing is that the eyes appear to follow the viewer from every angle.
Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughing_Cavalier
Another painting that came to mind was Elizabeth Peyton’s 1995 portrait of Burkhard Riemschneider. Peyton works with ideas around celebrity culture, and her colourful portraits mostly convey the character of her subjects. In this painting the subject looks quite feminine but has strong character: his gaze is defiant, the hand and the thumb on his red lips challenge the viewer to guess what he is thinking, and at the same time appears to be thinking - I don’t care what you think.
Reference
http://www.artdiscover.com/en/artists/elizabeth-peyton-id2122
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78446
https://blog.nmwa.org/tag/burkhard-riemschneider/
My research led me to the conclusion that to convey character I would need to portray subtlety in the eyes and the body language, and though I didn’t have a clear idea of what to paint I knew I wanted to find something that would be a challenge so I could practice composition, brush strokes and mediums.
The catalyst was an advert I saw on TV which really caught my attention - of a black woman on a dark background, in lighting and colours reminiscent of Rembrandt’s portraits. This reminded me of a very interesting Jenny Saville video called “Visions of the Self: Jenny Saville on Rembrandt” in which she described how she analysed and learned lighting, brush strokes and blending of colours from Rembrandt’s self-portraits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut6q6Yys94o
Before I watched the video I found it difficult to analyse a painting as I didn’t quite know what I was looking for, but Saville’s description helped me, and I knew the scenes from the advert would allow me to put into practise some of the points Saville was talking about. As the advert was a moving image I took a burst photo on my iPhone in order to find the pose I liked best, and chose a photo where the subject showed an inquisitive face (for other photos follow the link: photography sketching).
For my medium I use WMO, and for my limited pallet I chose Ivory Black, Raw Umber, Cadmium Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow, Indian Red and Zinc White. For my support I used a 40 x 40cm canvas, and I wanted to use grisaille and glazing which I researched earlier in the course.
For my composition I wanted to experiment, setting my subject to the right of the canvas, and as the expression I wanted to convey was an inquisitive, questioning face and I thought the empty space to the left would give the portrait some sense of wonder. I wasn’t sure the composition would work but decide to try it anyway.
To get the proportions as accurate as possible I used an 8 x 8 grid and drew a loose outline of the face, and recalling that in one of the Sky Portrait Artist of the Year programmes one of the contestants used a mirror which reversed the image to check the accuracy of his proportions I tried this, which I found very useful. I then did a grisaille underpainting in Ivory Black
After which I did the glazing approximately 6 times using fast drying medium until I was happy with the result, and my final piece was -
During the process I realised that there is a quite limited range of WMO colours in terms of opacity and transparency compared with normal oil paints, and found that most of the colours I used were suitable for glazing apart from Naples Yellow and Zinc White which were very opaque.
I am quite happy with the final result and think I managed to convey the character of my subject, though the angle of some of the features is a bit out - her eyes and maybe the nose - but overall, it’s not bad. I like the fact that it has the feel of a classical portrait with something of Vermeer’s The girl with the Pearl Earring, because of the turban, and Rembrandt’s self-portraits, because of the colour palette.
I always worry about my backgrounds but recalled a comment that my tutor made on one of my first exercises regarding incorporating the colours I use in my main subject into the background to unify the composition. I therefore incorporated the colour of the turban into the background and some of the Indian Red from the background into the fleshtone, and believe it worked. I’m not however happy that the painting is so shiny due to the fast-drying medium I used - which I think should have been mixed with another medium to reduce the shine, but at the moment I don’t know which one I should have used so I will keep experimenting.
Reference
. Preview - How to Paint: The Grisaille Method with Jon de Martin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9k-qJxCuKo
. Aristides Juliette, (2010) Lessons in Classical painting, Watson Guphill,