Holbein Master Copy -- a new picture in progress

I started this project last fall. It will be a master copy of Holbein's Thomas More, painted to scale. The detail in the velvut cuffs, the fur collar and the stubble in the face are amazing. And learning how to paint them is the challenge I've taken on.

For the first time ever, I made use of an old fashioned "squaring up" technique: I drew a grid over a print that I bought years ago at New York's Frick Gallery and then drew a similar grid over my 24" by 30" canvas.

I've been concentrating on getting the face right and still have some minor adjustments to make to the jaw line. The real challenge though will be colour and I'm going to worry about it later. No two prints I've seen are alike and most that I have make the skin too yellow and the curtain too vibrant a green. Each print also brings out different details in each area, so I'm drawing on more than one version...

Version 1: Downloaded from the Google Art Project and its tour of the Frick Gallery in New York, where this painting hangs.

Version 2: Downloaded from the respected http://www.artrenewal.org/ archive of classical works.

Version 3: Downloaded from an internet picture archive

Brook Trout and Rope

I've left the perch alone for now. The word not the fish. A couple of sessions ago, I repainted "Perch" by first laying down small black boxes to represent where each letter needs to go. After adjusting the vertical and horizontal angles of the sides for each letter, I slowly began carving them out. That seemed to be the more efficient approach. They still need some fine tuning, but I'll do that at the "second painting" stage, which I'm close to beginning.

As you'll see from the image below, I've started blocking out the second set of letters: "Brook Trout". And I've begun to mess more with the rope, warming it up and making it a bit more ragged. The last thing I'll do before starting second painting is to fix the colour of the cork lantern and give the background another dark coat. The next one will be warmer, unlike our spring weather.

The trouble with Perch -- the word, not the fish

While working on smaller areas these last few weeks, my book has begun to sag on the stand. The front corner has actually "wilted" bit, so I've taken time to reshape the right page and need many more coats of white to mask the previous corner.  I've laid out one fish (a perch) on that page and have started giving shape to the one on the opposite page.

Painting words is proving more of a challenge than I imagined. I have to wipe out my first attempt at "P E R C H" and try again, this time using a rule to approximate 2 point perspective and block in the approximate positions of the letters. The vertical sides of the letters need to recede off to the right (and they would merge at some imaginary vanishing point to the upper far right). The horizontal sides of the letters also need to appear to follow an imaginary vanishing point on the left. What this is supposed to mean to me is that the tops of the letters are bigger/fatter than the bottoms of the letters. And the P should be taller than the H. When I stand directly in front of the book, the verticals do seem to line up with the edges of the page. But from my viewpoint 7 feet in front of my still life (looking directly at the corner of the page), the book sags, bending and distorting the edges of the page... What a pain.

I also need to revisit the cork. The right side is too cool. I was trying to follow the rule of painting skin, which is "cool, warm, cool, warm" -- cool highlights, warm in the lights, cool in the halftones, and warm in the lights. But in my last attempt, I mistakenly enlarged the cool half-tones and I need to make them thinner and return the warm darks to the  farthest side.

The background (now sunken in) will also be repainted later in a warmer tone...

Tenebrist Update -- Rope is hard. Cork is easy.

I've spent the last few weeks darkening the background areas and that's helped make the front of the book appear closer. I won't be able to achieve the brightness of the white page that you would see in real life, but there are still some things to do that will help... With each session, I make minor improvements to the drawing as I concentrate on smaller and smaller areas... Firm conclusion: rope is hard, cork is easy.

I made a slight modification to the set up by rehanging the yellow lure on wire instead of fishing line and leader so that I can more easily manipulate its position. It's now slightly higher and to the right so it doesn't obscure the edge of the carpet moving forward out of the shadows.  This lure will definitely be the last thing I paint.

Tenebrist still life -- a report in photos of my progress in the last six weeks

This is my first post since the start of winter.  Here's a reminder of what the set up looks like. I took this photograph last Saturday using a tripod that's slightly shorter than I am and the whites are showing brighter here than they actually are.

Below:
Progress as of February 19th. I spent this day repainting the background and adding the glass on the lamp while I was at it.  I still have a long way to go but seem to move faster each week.

From February 7: Redrawing the lure, building up the paper on the book, and touching up the area underneath the book to correct values and colour.

January 21: my first go at the lure.

January 15: Adding the rope and other shapes...

New Still Life -- Tenebrist Design with a Fishing Theme

Below is a photo of the setup for the next still life... There are 2 requirements for this project:
1. Tenebrist lighting. The Wikipedia definition of tenebrism is this: "from the Italian tenebroso ("murky"), (also called dramatic illumination) is a style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark, and darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image."
2. Something with writing on it.

I choose these objects or "characters":

• a cork lantern with tattered blue cord at its base, propped up on wood blocks
• a piece of old driftwood that looks like a petrified pike with its mouth open (but no teeth)
• red, black, and white cloth from the Ukraine
• an Ontario nature book open at a page showing an image and description of two fish -- a perch and a rainbow trout
• an old wooden fishing lure that is red on the top and has two beady eyes
• a bright yellow/red lure that has seen better days.

All of these objects are sitting in an ordinary cardboard box lined with black paper. On top and on the left side are 2 loose foam boards. When you pull them forward or back, the amount of lighing around the center grows or diminishes.

I spent 2 Saturday afternoons toying with this set up. In my first composition, the cork lantern was central and the driftwood came out from the right. This time, I shifted the lantern to the right, and then changed some of the diagonals. But the biggest change was the introduction of the yellow jure as the colour anomaly -- an object that doesn't look like it belongs and so when it appears the eye jumps to it. 

I've placed my yellow lure slightly off centre and hanging down from the top of the box. My camera on its tripod wasn't at my eye level and it tended to focus on the lure as the closest object, making it seem larger. It's actually smaller! In the final setup, I also changed the positioning of the blue cord and the red lure slightly.

Final touches for Still Life #1

I've been putting some finishing touches on this still life, including lightening up areas of the background instead of keeping it one solid colour. The greens in the bottle have been drying at different rates and the camera itself is picking that out as well. When the area dries, the bottle should sit more quietly in the background. The final thing I want to do is to improve the blending in the spout -- my old brushes were making that difficult. That's all that's left before calling it quits and taking the tea pot home.

Red, White and Green Still Life -- nearing completion...

I've spent the last few sessions on small details, softing and hardening edges to bring things to a final finish.
Last night I repainted the bottle, first oiling in the surrounding area so that I could see again the paint that has already sunk in. I still need to lose the edge on the left side or at least make it more symmetrical with the right, even though I've been painting it exactly the way I see it. The other things left on my To Do List include:

• repainting the highight on the tea pot again using white mixed with stand oil to make it both brighter and more opaque than a regular glaze
• smoothing the finish on the spout
• adding a grey glaze to the top of the roll on the red cloth (genuine dust has accumlated now)
• repainting the tea pot's handle, especially the edges that meet the background 

Wayne's Portrait -- Finished and Drying

Well, it took long enough but I finally wrapped up this picture on this Thanksgiving weekend.  I first added glazes of white and blue to the left backround to give the impression of window panes. Then I concentrated on sharpening some edges and softening others on the shirt. The larger areas I worked in are still very fresh and glossy, which the camera picks up no matter angle or setting I use. Eventually, the linseed oil/mineral spirits mixture will evaporate and the pigment will sink back into a dull matte, like the rest of the background and the chest. As it dries over the next six months, everything should even out -- and then come alive when I varnish. Now on to the next one.

Fresh background for the still life

I spent last night resaturating the background with a solid, fresh layer of ivory black/pale yellow ochre (which makes the green of the wall) and linseed oil, and blending it into the edges of the bottle. I also took the opportunity to repaint the bottle with a higher chroma green (Sap Green) and to lose some of its edges into the wet background. I'm not so concerned now with getting a symmetrical shape and the outline of the real bottle does get lost in places. But I still have to see how things look after the paint dries. In the meantime, I'll move on to other areas...