Rob On The Road! - Oil Portrait

This week I was able to attend an open session at Patris Studio and Art Gallery in Oak Park.
http://patrisstudiogallery.blogspot.com/ 

Our surprise model for the session was Rob Stewart, host of the very popular "Rob on the Road" television series seen on local public television station KVIE.  Now when I say very popular, the first thing I have to admit is that I have never seen or even heard of Rob's show, but the moment it was announced that he was to be our model, all the other artists went ga-ga!  As usual, I'm the last to know ANYTHING!  If you are like me but would like to know a little more about Rob's show, here's the link to KVIE  http://www.robontheroad.org/ and to the show's facebook page  (I'm sorry to say that I missed out on the group photo of the event that is posted on Facebook because I had to step outside for about 30 minutes to take a business phone call!  Bummer!)

Rob Stewart  Oil on linen panel,  9 x 12

Anyway, we had a great session and Rob was not only a good model, but he was a terrific sport.  These are the kinds of things that make Patris's studio so much fun and such a great place to enjoy and participate in art. 

Oh....and I'm pleased to say that Rob bought my portrait of him!  

Rob Stewart and my portrait of him.  Patris Studios, Oak Park

My Art Site: Bruce Hancock Fine Art

I Once Fell In Love with a Beautiful Dancer --- Oil on canvas panel.

I once fell in love with a beautiful dancer   8" x 16"  oil on canvas panel

I have failed many times to capture this beautiful subject.  Finally I think I did and what do you know...the key was to find and then paint my own response.  

My Art Site: Bruce Hancock Fine Art

"Bella" An Oil Portrait

This painting is from a photograph.  I really enjoy doing portraits and when the subject is as beautiful and the pose as striking as this young woman, it becomes a special journey.  I've read many artists who say that in order to do their best, they must feel a connection to the subject...no matter whether it is a portrait or a landscape or a still life.  I couldn't agree more.  Whenever I force a painting simply because I should paint "something", I usually have a less than successful effort.  I suppose every painting is a lesson worth experiencing, but when there is a connection to the subject matter, it becomes special.

It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that for a while, I fell in love with Bella, the subject of this painting.  I couldn't resist that "look"...it would melt an iceberg.  Although I only had a photograph as a source, painting Bella was a joy...and good for an old painter's soul. 

Bella    oil on stretched canvas   16" x 16" 

My Art Site: Bruce Hancock Fine Art

"Spence" An oil portrait

It's been a while since I painted a portrait.  This is from a snapshot I took of artist Chris Spencer of Locke, CA.  On this day, Spence was 'holding forth', as he often does, in front of Al the Wops.  Spence is not only a gifted artist who has made Locke his home for more than 30 years, but he is also one of those 'characters' that you run across now and then and who stay with you forever after.  I've had a lot of fun painting with Chris in Locke and the Delta and I've always enjoyed his outrageous (and insightful) take on life. 

I'd prefer to paint from life, but sometimes - often - that isn't possible.  I liked the photo and so I decided to try it.  It's a fairly large portrait - 16" x 20".   The compostion was difficult because of the hand, which I considered essential to the portrait.  It forced the head to the left of center, just the opposite of what I would normally want with the head also facing to the left.  As a result, the painting may be crowded on the left side. I'm not quite sure.  I've considered cropping closer (into a square) to see if that helps and I've tried it on Photoshop, but for now, I'll just let it sit for a week and then decide if it needs to be fixed is some way, or if it's ok as is.

Spence    oil on canvas   16" x 20"



Spence in Black and White  

Spence   Oil sketch on canvas

My Art Site: Bruce Hancock Fine Art

Blair - A Portrait

At a studio session with Suchitra Bhosle, I painted this portrait from our model Blair.  This is the second time Blair has been our subject.   This time Suchitra added a bit of a costume and a glass bottle as a prop.  I didn't feel that I did well in the studio session.  Time was even more limited than usual and I didn't feel that I had control of the painting when I left for the day.  Fortunately I had a decent photograph of Blair and I decided to see if I could pull the painting out in my own studio.  At first it didn't go well....I felt I was adding layer on layer of wet paint and everything felt mushy.  Finally, gathering my courage....and fighting the urge to call it quits....I scraped the face area down with the edge of a palette knife, leaving just a ghost image.  I started again, blocking in shadows and adding lights slowly. 

I'm satisfied with the result.  Mostly I'm glad I didn't give up on it.  It is a much better feeling to see a painting through to an acceptable - if not totally successful - conclusion.

This is my final portrait of Blair.  It's oil on canvas panel.  12 x 16.

Blair   Oil on 16" x 12" RayMar canvas panel. 

My Art Site: Bruce Hancock Fine Art

The Dancer Revisited - Portrait

I photographed this beautiful 'belly dancer' at a recent Festival in a park in Rancho Cordova, a suburb of Sacramento.  I'm painting a nearly full length figure / portrait of her, but in spite of the wonderful subject matter, it has been a struggle.  Along the way, I painted a quick sketch of a head and shoulder portrait that I posted earlier.  It was an entertaining break from the larger painting.  However I have continued to struggle with the larger work.  Even the background has me completely stymied.  Once again I turned to the portrait to try a completely abstract...and very light....background.  I also couldn't resist taking the actual portrait to a higher degree of finish.  It's still far from finished, but it was a good exercise once again.  I like the very bright and warm background against her dark skin and costume.  Back to the bigger painting again....

Here's the Dancer portrait revisited.  It's 16" x 12" oil on canvas.

The Dancer Revisited  16 x 12 oil on canvas.

 



My Art Site: Bruce Hancock Fine Art

A Long Road Traveled (The Preacher) - A Portrait

With almost 20 hours on this portrait, I think I've reached an end.   It's on canvas taped to a board, so in a few days...maybe this weekend, I'll decide on a final size and stretch it.  I wouldn't be surprised if I find a few more things to tweak, but for now, I'm done. Time to sign it. 

If you love to paint portraits, this is the kind of subject you wait and wait for. What a wonderful face.   In the high quality photo reference that I used, the colors in this gentleman's skin are amazing.  There are golds and reds and oranges and the highlights are amazing blues.  The biggest challenge is not to get too caught up in all that wonderful color and let the painting become a patchwork quilt- beautiful but not unified.  That wasn't easy.  The other issue for me was maintaining the overall darkness of the face, even though on close examination so much of it is beautiful bold color.  I used a lot of what I learned from Suchitra Boshle on the control of values and I think it helped.  (http://suchitrabhosle.com/)  Although I've only had a few sessions with Suchitra, I've become acutely aware of values in portrait painting, thanks to her instruction and example.  I've drawn on another teacher, Dan Edmondson, as well.  (http://www.danieledmondson.com/)  All through this painting, Dan's admonition to "Make beautiful brushstrokes" has been constantly in mind.  I've resisted smoothing and 'licking' - as much as I can! - and instead I've consciously struggled to maintain brush strokes by mixing a color, applying it and leaving it alone.   I'm trying Dan, I'm trying!

But above all I hope I have captured the warm and gentle spirit of this man that shines through in the photo reference...

Here's the final portrait....(The whites behind the head slightly to the left are not there....I continue tos stuggle to get faithful photographs. sigh) 

A Long Road Traveled   Oil on linen   20 x 16 approx. 

Below are some notes and a picture of The Preacher in progress.
At that point I've got about 12 - 15 hours in it:

I'm nearing the end, but I'd like to let it sit and set-up for awhile before I make the final finishing strokes.  I'll add highlights to the crown of the head and a few other spots like the bridge of the nose.  It's amazing how that can add dimension and life to a portrait.  It's also amazing how easy it is to overdo it and mess up the whole thing!  I can see that the tip of the nose needs more modeling so I'll spend some time there.  I may also continue to tweak the background a bit.  Generally I'll drag it into the head to lose edges here and there, but perhaps not in this painting. In fact, I may try to push the background away to make the head come forward, increasing the three dimensional effect. Finally, stepping away for a bit and looking at photographs of the painting is a great way to see drawing errors and areas that need more work.  But it's almost complete so I'd though I'd show a WIP (work in progress) photo.  (Not to mention that I need something to POST!) 

The Preacher WIP  oil on linen approx. 20 x 16

and here is my oil sketch 'block in'

The Preacher  WIP  Initial Block In  Oil on linen

My Art Site: Bruce Hancock Fine Art

Suchitra's Model #2 Portrait

 I had the good fortune to spend another studio session with Suchitra Bhosle a week ago.  I've posted about painting with Suchitra before, so I won't go into it again, except to say that it is always a challenging and energizing experience.   Once again, I felt a bit like a child with his first finger paint set, except I wasn't nearly so free and unconstrained!  Values, values, values.  I learn a bit more each time about values. 

 My painting of the model was not especially good.  When I started, I felt that I was on the right track, but time was short.  For some reason, after about an hour, I felt completely lost.  The drawing felt completely out of control, and I realized my mind was a jumble of conflicting thoughts.  Once again I wiped my canvas down and determined to start again.  I'm not any more comfortable doing that than I have ever been - it always feels like defeat to me - but I've begun to realize that if I do not have a plan and if I am not careful and methodical in the beginning, there is very little likelihood of rescuing the painting no matter how long I dabble and poke at it.  Better to wipe it down and THINK.  Anyway, the remaining time wasn't enough to take the painting to any level of finish and I left with yet another panel to pile up in a stack somethere.

After letting it sit for a week, I decided to see if I could bring the painting to a higher degree of finish and at the same time, identify and work through some of the problems I had left unresolved.  Fortunately I'd taken some pictures at the very end of the session, so I had important reference material as a guide.

This is Suchitra's model #2 (of course, I've forgotten her name!).  I would guess that there is about five hours total in this small canvas, counting the 1 1/2 - 2 hours spent in the studio session.  I feel that I learned a lot by finishing up this portrait and I have a much nicer feeling of completion.

Suchitra's Model #2   Oil on 12" x 9" panel 

 


My Art Site: Bruce Hancock Fine Art

Suchitra's Model

Another challenging yet so rewarding session with Suchitra Bhosle today.  I didn't catch the model's name, but she was an attractive young lady and novice model.  Suchitra had a pretty full house and I had a head-on portrait view.  I used a raymar linen panel with one coat of oil primer.  Honestly I didn't care for it that much.  It felt a little rough to me, and the early brush strokes dragged and the paint seemed hard to apply.  More and more I'm becoming aware of the painting surface.  I think an additional coat of oil primer would probably make the panel more suitable for my tastes.

Once again, I struggled with Suchitra's method of working with subtle values, but after a rocky start I felt it beginning to come together.  By the end of the session, I was feeling more comfortable with the process.  There is much to learn from Suchitra, and I look forward to many more sessions with her.

Suchitra's Model  Oil on linen panel  9" x 12"

Kiersten

This afternoon, I joined Suchitra Bhosle and several other painters in Suchitra's studio.  Our portrait model was a very beautiful young woman named Kiersten.  This was my second session with Suchitra, and this time I felt that I began to understand her approach.  She emphasizes "true' values and their intrinsic interrelationship.  It's hard for me to put into words...and for awhile, even harder to capture with a brush, but slowly I begin to understand.  At first, the painting seemed dull, with a gray cast to the skin that was very difficult to accept.  But I resisted throwing in my traditional skin tones and stuck to the program.  I tried to meticulously judge the value and temperature of each brushstroke to the preceding brushstroke, and to my utter amazement, it began to work.  I'm very pleased with the result. 
 
Interestingly, for me at least, was that the 'value approach' also changed the way I painted this portrait fundamentally.   Normally, I make a fairly detailed brush drawing on the canvas and then begin to put in darks, midtones and lights.  In this case, I did nothing more than establish a general oval of the face, and a vertical and horizontal 'cross' to get the tilt and placement of the eyes.  At that point, I started putting down values once by one, in essence drawing with the values rather than with lines.  The head grew outward from the eye sockets, in a sense.  Very different for me. 

I can't wait for the next session with Suchitra.

Kiersten   Oil on stretched canvas   12" x 16" 

A Portrait Of Jeff

It's been awhile since I've done a portrait, even from a photo.  This is from the Dan Edmondson Art Masters Program and is a photo supplied by Dan.  The support is a commercial cotton canvas pre-stretched and prep'd.  I added one coat of Golden acrylic gesso to get the canvas a bit smoother and to reduce the absorbancy.  It worked fairly well, but in the future I'm going to begin to use oil based primer for the final coat.  I didn't have any already prepared and it takes about a week for the oil based primer coat to be ready for paint....which means planning ahead, not something I'm real good at.

The background was put in with a turpy wash of Raw Umber,  Rembrandt Olive Green and a little Transparent Oxide Red.  There's a little Ivory Black in there too.  After the portrait was blocked in I added another, more opaque layer to the background immediately around the head, losing a lot of edges in the process.  I'm not crazy about how the background came out, but I think I learned a few things that will help next time.

 The head was "massed in" with a shadow color rather than my more typical approach of drawing in the shape and features with a brush.  Lights were added and then it became a process of working back and forth between light and dark to find a balance and to get the features defined.  he flesh tones are Terra Rosa with white and, in most cases, some Olive Green in varying degrees.  Total time is about five hours.  After I took the photo, I saw several things that need attention, but for now, I'll consider this study lesson done.  It's time to move on to something else.   

Jeff    Oil on canvas  Approx.  18" x 12"