Canson XL oil / acrylic paper

Profile of a Man

One of the painting classes I am taking is one on portraits. The teacher, Barbara, does beautiful work in oils. She is detailed, observant, laissez-faire, and is getting me into enjoying painting portraits of people. For me, I like people I don’t know. Personal portraits are too personal, and while I have done some decent pencil drawings, paint is another story altogether.

If you like free, public domain images of all sorts, check out Pixabay. It’s free and I use it over and over again. For portraits and figures, as well as anything else you might want including “adult” matter (i.e.nudes), you can find it. Many of my art teachers like my photos I use in painting class, and unless I have taken them, most come from this resource.

I am giving myself an exercise to paint portraits. How many, no idea. Different positions are certainly ones to study – profile, 3/4, frontal, looking up or down, etc. I also intend to do bodies, working on action and movement, but that is for another time. Today’s post is my painting of the model above.

What drew me to this portrait was its simplicity. Profiles are a good place to begin. The strong light and contrast in this portrait makes things not too subtle, which I think is a good place to begin for a portrait. Below is my painting.

My chosen medium is fluid acrylics, which are about the consistency of heavy cream. In the beginning, I laid in the background with thinned paint, and the same for the general features of the face. As I progressed, I increased the paint’s density by not thinning it, but as time progressed I varied its thickness depending on the opacity I wanted.

Besides rendering good values, I also wanted to focus on brushwork. I have said many times I tend to be a dabber, using a round pointed brush. I set that aside and worked in flats ranging in size from 1/4 inch to about an inch. One of these flats is also an angle brush. For tiny details I did use a fine round.

Altogether, this was painted over 3 days, using time to let the paint dry (or a hair dryer) and take time to step away from the painting. That way I could review what was done and think about changes. In the end, I am pleased with this painting quite a bit.

Fluid acrylic paint, Canson XL oil paint / acrylic paper, 9×12, finished size 8×11.

The House in Back, Albuquerque

Double lots are interesting as often you find an old, beat up house behind one that looks great from the street. Such is this – an old stucco house with turquoise trim on a back lot in Albuquerque. Not a fancy house, but one which makes for a great study.

This is another pastel done on the paper I created using yellow ochre and Golden pastel medium. It works pretty good so far! I laid in values, working from large to small, adding details at the end. As with oils, the work was done dark to light. In between each layer, after knocking off the pastel dust, I sprayed it with rubbing alcohol, and used alcohol as the final sealant. As with any sealant on pastel, the colors end up becoming darker, so I worked to make this a bit lighter than I thought it should be. Some post-scan twiddling in LR, too.

As an aside, my air purifier arrived, so I have it turned on and used it during the painting process as well as wore a protective mask. I damp wiped all my surfaces the best I could as well.

Nupastels, soft pastels, Rembrandt pastels, Terry Ludwig pastels, Jack Richeson pastels on Canson XL oil / acrylic paper primed with Golden pastel ground and yellow ochre paint. 9×12.

Tomorrow I think I will prime some watercolor paper to see how it does as a painting surface.

Playtime

For some reason I remembered the fun I have had with pastels – soft, hard, pencil. I dug them out yesterday afternoon to play with, not to do anything great. I have not used them in a year or two, and with that comes the need to re-learn what to do with them. I figured an imaginary landscape somewhere would be good territory for exploration, so in the Land of Something, I began.

The first thing I did was to used Golden Pastel Ground which I mixed with some fluid yellow ochre acrylic paint and water, thinning it to the consistency of cream. I applied 3 thin layers onto Canson XL oil / acrylic painting paper, letting it dry in between each layer. This give a sanded surface with a bit of grit, and it held up really well.

After the paper and ground were dried, I pulled out all my pastels. I have soft pastels by Rembrandt and Terry Ludwig; harder pastels called Nupastel, and some reputable pastel pencils by Derwent and Faber-Castell. The first layers were done with soft pastels to lay in the values. I used rubbing alcohol and a paint brush to establish values. The alcohol seals the pastel pigment and once dried the colors do not flake off.

I applied layer after layer after layer of soft pastels, blending as needed, and using a very fine mist spray bottle with alcohol in it to settle each layer. In the end, I used the Nupastels and the pastel pencils to see what they can and cannot do. When finished, I sealed the painting with more alcohol and used a hair dryer to hasten the drying.

Last time I did pastels I got frustrated, and it seemed everything I did got worse and worse! My own thoughts are I am more accomplished or skilled with colors and such now than I was a few years ago, so this may be why I feel this is a successful foray into a forgotten medium. I expect I will be carrying on with pastels as they are a lot like drawing and painting, messy and bright. I think I may attempt a building with the next painting.

Working with pastels produces a lot of dust. I wore a face mask and damp wiped my work area after I finished. If I continue to paint in pastels, I plan to get a good air purifier with a HEPA filter to keep the potential dust hazard to a minimum.

9 x 12 Canson XL oil / acrylic paper; Golden pastel ground with yellow ochre and water; Terry Ludwig and Rembrandt soft pastels with pastel pencils and Nupastel. Rubbing alcohol used to seal dust. (Now let’s see how it works as a final fixative!)