One of the final demos from my “Loosen Up Your Paintings” online workshop at The Winslow Art Center.
This class was a real treat because it was all about finding the essentials in paintings, regardless of genre. We tackled still life, landscape, and figurative/portraiture - all in 4 weeks! I work my students hard:)
The final class was about loosening up an existing, tight painting. Scouring my shelving, I realized that none of the works felt tight enough so I picked a piece that I’d done from life in a model drop in session and seized it up. The second image is the original version. You can see that it has a clear intention: to show the rich colour of the model’s hair and skin under warm light. Colour can only be appreciated if there’s enough of it so there are large expanses of colour in both areas without much modelling or detail.
I took this piece and removed a sense of intention by modelling the heck out of it.
Something that happens when we paint without a concept in mind is that we give everything equal priority. The resulting paintings show a uniform level of detail across every element: the hair, shirt, features, and edges are all the same. There’s no sense of a focal area. Notice how the hair has become dull thanks to the many small value changes and the addition of plenty of white. It’s no longer a study in rich colour; it’s a portrait of a hair fetish.
I also did something that I see so often in paintings done from photos: I darkened the shadows far too much. Her skin no longer reads as a luminous, reflective surface, picking up light from her shoulder and chest. It’s heavy and opaque and far too dark for the value of her skin.
This was actually an interesting exercise. I could see how easily over explaining happens to a painter. It was also amusing to see my husband’s face when he saw this version lying on the table. He was quite relieved when I told him it wasn’t a new direction that I was taking my work in.
During the demo, I showed strategies for loosening up a painting in any genre, but the biggest message was for painters to know their intention. What are they trying to show the viewer? They can’t show everything with equal treatment or the work becomes meaningless - like an essay with no thesis.
I decided that the focus of this loosened version would be her eyes and, of course, better colour. With that firmly in mind, I could tackle the painting confidently. I reintroduced big patches of rich colour in hair and shirt, and lightened up those dark skin shadows. Edges were fun to obliterate.
I didn’t have a photo of the model, so likeness had nothing to do with this. Years of life painting and of simply looking at the world and its wonders, told me that there would be cool colour bounced from her shirt into her jaw so that helped bring some life into that shadow. Notice that I also simplified it into a single, flat shape. Without the model actually in the room, I couldn’t begin to see the variety that I saw in her shadowed side from life, so I went with a simple, plausible shadow that connected face, neck and shoulder.
Then I addressed the level of detail in the features. For a while, the eyes and lips were vying for focal area but, by diminishing hard edges around the mouth and adding small accents and a highlight in the left-side eye, I could indicate that it was the most important area. I didn’t give the right eye the same level of detail because that would be overdoing it.
When we look at a person as we can’t see both eyes with equal clarity. Only one eye is in focus at any time and we have to shift our eyes back and forth, making first one clear and then the other, as we talk to that person. (I’m always noticing this effect in emotionally-intense moments in movies when people are face to face, talking about serious matters. Close ups show their eyes tracking intently back and forth, from eye to eye, as they earnestly say their lines. A steady stare would feel unrealistic and probably disturbing. )
The newly-loosened painting is no work of great art but it does do everything that I set out to do. I reintroduced rich colour and made the piece feel focused. It should be clear that the eye area is my focal point. Job done! No painting can, or should, say everything possible about a subject. It should just say a simple thing, clearly.
**By the way, that AWFUL hard line down the left side of her face was part of the demo. It was a “what not to do to edges” moment:) Isn’t it ghastly?
Happy painting!
Still LOVE your shares and the insights you provide in these descriptions! Always appreciate your thoughtfulness in breaking down your approach to the images on your easel. Hope you are well and that some warmth is in the air up north. Ingrid continues to be one of Winslow Art Centers best instructors with great feedback!
Thank you so much, Paul❤️
It's warming up here and I'm ready for something green to emerge in the yard. I'm always ecstatic at the first dandelion:)
I hope you're well and painting.