Wrapping up the Greyscale Drapery

Posted on July 13, 2011 by pearce

Because I didn’t like the balance of the composition as it stood I’ve added more fabric to the left side of the dress, making it extend under the Queen’s hand and off the edge of the panel, creating a more fluid feeling to the bottom of the painting. I’m enjoying working out the folds of the drapery, and will spend a little time continuing to alter and shape the folds to iron out any irregularities that don’t make sense or feel unnatural.

I’ve worked on the walls a little, adding more detail to the wainscot moldings and glazing the stone with some Ceramic White to soften and brighten the finish, then lining out the cracks with a bright white on the right side of each line to create a reflection from the light as it comes into the painting from stage right. Although using a Raw Umber for the purpose I also lined the slabs that make the paved floor.

Thanks to Godward’s painting Mischief and Repose (which can be found at the Getty Centre in Los Angeles) I’ve been thinking of animal skins and wondering where I can get some for a painting. Although I admire some of Godward’s technique I don’t particularly like his subjects, which are almost universally straightforward observations of beautiful women in neo-classical settings. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s all there is! His mentor Alma-Tadema nearly always had subjects of greater depth and drama, with greater spatial depth and more interesting settings than his protege.

Posted in Arthurian, Making work, Other people's work, Pre-raphaelite, Queen of Cups, Sources | Leave a comment

Fabrication

Posted on July 12, 2011 by pearce

Now there’s colour in the window the composition is starting to make sense, with the figure framed within the blue sky. I like the depth that’s beginning to emerge, but of course the sky and sea will need glazing to get any sense of solidity.

I’ve used the Iron Oxide to stain the marble wainscot and to colour the window boxing, and will glaze it again with a transparent white to drop the colour back a bit. Almost all of the original orange sealer is covered with a first layer of paint, although the warmth of the Iron Oxide comes through the paint, lending the composition a nice glow, even though there’s going to be quite a lot of blue in this piece.

The drapery is taking shape, with the fabric of the dress spreading on the ground around the figure’s knees. I’m much happier with this loose fabric than the earlier tight version. It reminds me a little of John William Godward’s work. Although Godward wasn’t a Pre-Raphaelite he was Alma-Tadema’s protege, sharing many of the romantic sensibilities of Victorian aesthetes. Living into the nineteen-twenties he killed himself in disgust with his falling from favour following the advent of modernism, particularly Picasso, whose work he loathed.

Posted in Arthurian, Making work, Other people's work, Pre-raphaelite, Queen of Cups, Tarot-related paintings | Leave a comment

The Wall and the Queen’s Dress

Posted on July 8, 2011 by pearce

Painting the clothing in grey is satisfying, although I’m not satisfied with the skirt, which looks too tight and uncomfortable in my drawing. I borrowed some fabric from the theatre next to my studio and will get my daughter to kneel in roughly the same position with the cloth wrapped around her like a dress so I can create a nice drapery reference drawing to use in the painting.

I spent a few hours working on defining the upper half of her body using a Van Dyke brown over the grey. It always surprises me that there is such a big difference between the colour of this paint when it’s mixed with a white and that when it’s simply thinned with some walnut alkyd medium. Its a really terrific combination for getting the grey layer done. The light fabric wrapped around her abdomen is painted in Ceramic White over Foundation White, which gives the impression of translucence.

I started work on the wall, which I’ve separated with a shelf across the centre of the painting. The upper wall has a plastered finish with a painted stripe which is beginning to make an environment for the Queen to live in. Because I want the lower part of the wall to be marble I’ve painted it with a preliminary layer of blended and patchy grey and white, with a soft shadow along the top where the shelf will overhang it later.

 

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Love my Vertical Monitor

Posted on July 5, 2011 by pearce

Having completed the drapery study I needed to use it for reference beside the painting, so I scanned the drawing and put it onto my vertical monitor. Using the computer as an aid in the studio is the contemporary analogue to Renaissance painters using mirrors or the camera obscura. I love the vertical monitor because I can observe large pieces of the reference materials close to the canvas I’m working on. I think it’s pretty cool having modern computer equipment alongside truly old tools like fan brushes and maulsticks. Later this week I’ll be experimenting with a monitor arm that will allow me to move the screen around with ease. It’s an articulated device that’s going to look great on my old-fashioned easel.

Today working on the drapery went pretty well, working in wet white local ground with a Raw Umber to find the shadows. The contrast is a little too strong (I can see that even without using the black mirror) but this is not a big problem, being altered easily in subsequent layers.

 

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Complete Star

Posted on July 5, 2011 by pearce

The legs bothered me because they were too dark and roughly painted, so I worked on an additional layer of Ceramic White and a flesh mix of Cadmium Orange and Viridian with Foundation White to raise the value a little, then adding a touch of Ceramic here and there to highlight the dress and arms.

She’s done.

The Star’s destined for a group show of romantic figurative paintings that’s going to be in the Kwan Fong Gallery on 20th August. It’s going to be quite a show with an extraordinary group of artists! We’re making preparations for the exhibit now, building partition walls and installing lighting, preparing to print flyers and posters. Mark your calendars! The opening reception will be at 7.00 pm.

I’m so pleased to be showing alongside this group of artists. I admire them all.

New Romantic Figure Painting

Including works by Peter Adams, Mia Tavonatti, Tony Pro, Alexey Steele, Jeremy Lipking, Michael Adams, Cyn McCurry and Michael Pearce.

Saturday 20th August    Exhibit opens
Saturday 20th August 7pm    Opening Reception
Saturday 10th September 7pm     Artists reception
Friday September 30th   Exhibit closes

Posted in Exhibits, Novorealist, Other people's work, The Star | Leave a comment

Dressing the Queen of Cups

Posted on July 5, 2011 by pearce

I’ve taken a morning figuring out the values of the face and neck, using a Foundation White as a local wet white ground, then White and a flesh mixture of Cadmium Orange and Viridian to generate the darker areas. Although I’m becoming happier with the composition of the face I’ll continue editing her and modifying the details and subtleties of the shifts in value and colour for the duration of the painting.

I painted the background walls with a pounced glaze of very pale yellow, as subtle and delicious as Devonshire clotted cream. Painting the glaze thin is important because it allows some of the warmth of the Iron Oxide Red to come through, giving the wall surface the subtle shifts in colour that really do appear in natural light.

Working on the drapery was very exciting, presenting a new challenge that I really enjoyed. In the photo on the right you can see what I’m planning at the moment, although it may well change as I get to work today, because problems and errors always become apparent while working.

You’ll remember that I decided to design clothing for her myself, following the example of Pre-Raphaelite Burne-Jones, who invented fabulous homages to Medieval drapery in his work, as you can see in the first picture. I love his delicate drawings – he’s got such a sensitive touch. I looked at the neo-classicist Alma-Tadema’s Coign piece too (second picture), taking the arm and sash design from him. We saw this lovely painting in San Francisco some months ago. I really like his colour choices for his fabrics, which are richly hued without being too bright.

 

 

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The View in the Black Mirror

Posted on July 3, 2011 by pearce

I’d heard from Mike Adams that old masters used a black mirror to check out the value balance of their work, but although I’ve painted with a mirror behind me for years to help check on composition and cut down on walking back and forth I’d not seen a black mirror in practice, so I found a piece of glass and asked Stacy to paint it black so we could see how effective it was. It’s simple to use; just look at your work in the mirror.

I thought it was really great for making obvious any overly bright or dark areas that were not immediately noticable to regular eyesight and I think I’ll use it again in future just to check on the paintings as I make them.

It’s hard to take a photo that shows the effect that the black mirror has on seeing the work, but here’s a slightly altered iPhone picture (I adjusted the contrast and exposure in Bridge) that gives at least some idea of it, clearly showing Joe’s over-bright ear on the left side, which needs fixing. Handy, huh?

 

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Posted on July 1, 2011 by pearce

I’ve moved on with a new piece, with Suzy as my model (I’ll get to the Green Man’s ears soon, I promise). I photographed her during a Figure Drawing class several months ago, thinking that this pose was too pretty to miss. The Pre-Raphaelites and other Victorian Aesthetes used to paint clothes onto nude figures with great success, so I thought I’d try it too. So far the drawing of the figure is complete (I’ll work out the geometry of her environment later), I’ve sealed the painting with Iron Oxide Red, and used a Foundation White to provide a local ground for the figure. I applied the white while the Oxide was still wet, allowing it to mix while being applied, resulting in a nice warm base for the addition of flesh tones.

I love painting beautiful women, and I’m enjoying this pose, which makes me think of a group of archetypal images of gorgeous women from the past. Doesn’t it remind you of those Vargas beauties that pilots liked to paint onto the noses of fighting aircraft in World War Two?

Because I’m getting ready to shoot reference photos for a group painting of the Re-awakening Arthur I’ve been thinking recently about the mythical King quite a lot, so I’m not surprised to find imagery from his story creeping into my other paintings ahead of schedule; here Guinevere, La Reine de Coupe, is caught fixing her hair beside a bench in a bathroom in a marble neo-classical chamber, with a sword and cup beside her; the sword is Excalibur, the cup is the grail. A new story of the awakening King is about to begin.

Arthurian romances and early tarot cards have been connected closely since their origin in the fifteenth century. At roughly the same time that Bonifacio Bembo was found hunched over his work-bench in Milan applying gold leaf and delicate pigments to his designs of the first known Tarot cards, he also illustrated a manuscript edition of The Tales of Lancelot, clearly influencing his cards. Within a century tales of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were popular early outputs of a new-fangled invention that had emerged from Germany, the printing press, right on time for the printed Marseilles decks to make their appearance.

As a reference to Bembo I’m going to use one of his illustrations for a fresco painted on the wall beside the window behind the girl. I’m particularly interested in finding an image that invites men to become knights again, re-instilling ideas of chivalry and manliness.

 

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Green Man

Posted on June 28, 2011 by pearce

The Green Man is finished following a morning of detailing ivy and adding Pre-Raphaelite Rosetti’s purple to the shadows and hair. I added some highlights to the veins of the ivy leaves, then lightened up the shadows of the ivy on the shirt with a glaze of Foundation White, popping in some highlights around the collar, then coloured his neck with a little Red Ochre. The stems of the ivy took a little Iron Oxide Red which I dragged into the leaves here and there to make them vibrate a little between warm and cool.

 

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Man Goes Green

Posted on June 27, 2011 by pearce

The green man finally got some of his proper colour, making him look quite different. A layer of Olive green over the background has made it drop back considerably with a vaguely leafy feel, while the ivy emerging from his mouth has been glazed with a layer of Sap Green, thicker in the “v” shapes between the lighter veins of the leaves.

It was focused work that took several hours to complete, but it’s very worthwhile. He’s beginning to feel pretty close to completion now. I hope to finish up in the next couple of days.

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