Juliano: chin and neck tuck

Small spaces are harder in many ways than the larger ones. I recently reworked the chin and neck, and have continued building up the smaller areas of hair in the left, both in and out of the light.

Hermes and his Goulish Cartoon

Over the winter in my home studio, I've been working on Hermes, on loan from a friend. I recently finished his cartoon and happened to capture the daytime shadows on his face at noon. In the photo below, taken early on the morning of Sat Mar 22, the shadows have not yet moved into the place where I've fixed them... He looks goulish in the drawing, but the anatomy is basically right. I will be transferring him to good paper and to linen canvas soon. On the canvas, I'll do a quick drybrush in raw umber to bring out the correct values again. Hermes has been patient.

More hair, less vegetable oil

I've been concentrating on the left side of the head, trying to take the hair up to the same level of "first painting" as the forehead. The construct of the hair also needed to be trimmed to make the shapes smaller on the left... Fernando noticed the open jar of vegetable oil I had on my stand. I had been using it to wipe brushes clean before switching to another value -- but this was putting the oil on the canvas! The vegetable oil should only be used when ending the session, and be rinsed out of the brushes with soap and water.



I'm also trying to construct my own neutral value scale, matching the Munsell example Juan posted on a pillar near my easel. His example matches true neutrality. It places pure black at 0 and pure white at 10. My own black paint (Ivory) appears somewhat bluish and all of my first attempts up to 5 were too blue (cool) and needed more brown.

Hair on the Head

This week, I started blocking out sections of the hair and loosely working the shapes, both in the shadows and the lights. I'm holding several brushes in my hand at once -- light/dark tones, wide and small -- so I can push forwards and backwards in colour and stroke as needed. Some spots are more finished than others. I've barely touched the far left side.

I've been told not to leave any hard edges that aren't necessary or final (especially between black and white extremes because they will be hard to soften during "second painting"). Another warning: not to "blend" during first painting (because it's a waste of time) and instead it's OK to leave the paint blotchy, as I did on the face and neck. When I started today the chin was too wide and not angled correctly; I've moved the points of the chin down to correct them but haven't finished setting the edges correctly. Next week.

The head is from one of 6 statues Michaelango made for the Tomb of Giuliano de' Medici. There are many references to this on the web.