The practice of oil painting is an immense subject. The Drawing EZine. Sketching Portraits in Oil With Only Your Brush. Artacademy.

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1 The Drawing EZine Artacademy.com Sketching Portraits in Oil With Only Your Brush The practice of oil painting is an immense subject matter of study. To compound the complexities of classical methods of oil painting are numerous with many conflicting approaches and recipes. Art materials have come a long way since the days of the Old Masters when pigments and mediums were mixed from scratch. You can become as fanatical as you like trying to emulate certain mixtures that certain Masters are suspected to have used. But more important that what they used is how they painted - or technique. There is a well known saying that all painting problems are drawing problems. For those of you who have been dedicating much study and practice to your drawing skills and mastery of materials you may now feel ready to progress from drawing to oil painting. In this lesson, we will use Rubens' chalk drawing of his young son as the basis for our painting study.

2 Throughout his life, Peter Paul Rubens ( ) was a dedicated disciple of copying the masters before him. Exploring the works and painting process of his predecessor Titian (Tiziano Vecellio ) contributed greatly to Rubens s development as one of the greatest painters in Western Art. As we have discussed many times in past newsletters, the practice of copying is more than just replicating a master work. At times one will copy to seek an understanding of composition; othertimes it is a study of color or drawing or, at a more technical level, how an artist approached the Abozzo which is an artistic term meaning rough drawing such as a preliminary sketch or a model such as a maquette used to rough out a proposed sculpture. First Steps To quickly recap a few points: Store bought stretched canvases are generally primed with acrylic gesso. This gesso is actually a very low grade house paint sprayed onto very low grade canvas. The only real benefit is their exceptionally low cost which makes it appealing for beginner students. It is somewhat ludicrous for a beginning artist to spend hours and days stretching and priming a multitude of canvases and panels that are meant for practice exercises and soon to be discarded. Yet the sooner one develops the feel for a high quality painting surface the better. Hmm, a conundrum and we haven t even stepped up to the easel yet! I am going to up the ante and further discuss the initial approach. In the January lesson I introduced you to an elementary imprimatura whereby yellow ochre diluted with turpentine was streaked onto the acrylic gesso canvas and then streaked over again with charcoal grey oil paint also diluted with turpentine but with a few drops of linseed oil to bind it to the previous layer. Let s now take this preparatory process a big step forward. For this lesson I recommend working on 11 x 14 canvas boards; get at least six of them. You can get them for about a buck each at your local art store. Begin by prepping only one board. Everyone messes up their first one and you don t want to get stuck working on six unfortunate surfaces. The learning process can be encapsulated by... uh! oh! Well, I won t do that again! We ll begin with an egg/oil/water toned emulsion (also called Mayonnaisse) All rights reserved.

3 Applying an emulsion onto an acrylic ground improves the painting surface significantly and approximates the feel of working on a chalk gessoed panel. Frankly, once you start painting on a well prepared surface you will never want to go back to a store-bought canvas. What you ll need is an egg, stand oil, yellow ochre pigment, two glass jars and water (preferrably distilled, but filtered water will suffice in a pinch. Tap water is okay for now since we are working on throw-away canvas boards.) The recipe is 2 parts egg yolk / 1 part stand oil / parts water. Mix the egg yolk and stand oil together first in a jar that has a tight-fitting lid and then add the water. Give it a vigorous shake. This creates the emulsion. Pour half of your emulsion into the other jar and set it aside in a cool place. We ll need this in a few hours or so. Peter Paul Rubens, Assumption of the Virgin, 1637 Modello Into the other jar add a small amount of yellow ochre pigment. We want to color our emulsion to that of wheat or raw canvas. There is no hard and fast rule on this; you will need to experiment until you find the tone that suits you best. Most art stores carry pigment powder for those artists who make their own paints. A 4 oz. jar of yellow ochre costs about $7 to $14 and will last a long time. With a 11 2 or 2 flat brush apply an even wash of yellowochre toned emulsion, lay flat and allow to dry. The egg/oil/ water emulsion sets up quickly and in most cases will be dry to the touch in about 6 hours give or take. If you don t have stand oil you can use linseed oil but it will have a drier feel to it. Once the first layer of emulsion is dry to the touch we apply a tonal prime to the canvas. Streaking the imprimatura is a Baroque technique that brilliantly breaks up the monotony of the yellow ochre and sets the light that filters through the layers of paint to, well, dancing All rights reserved.

4 The streaking is readily seen in Rubens s modello Assumption of the Virgin. A modello is a small preparatory oil sketch. Rubens loosley brushed on his imprimatura which created a tonal underpainting that glowed with light. Into the untoned emulsion (the jar that we set aside) mix up a translucent grey using the trailings of a charcoal pencil. The trailings are the specks of charcoal left over when we sharpen our pencil leads with sandpaper. I used a 6B Wolff s carbon pencil. This way you can both prep your second emulsion and sharpen your pencils simultaneously. With your most mangled round brush (preferably a #16 or 20) streak on the charcoal grey emulsion with uneven strokes as I ve shown here. The key is uneven! For this lesson I ve chosen to streak horizontally across the canvas; my reason being that the overall dynamic of the portrait sketch is a left to right movement. Let dry overnight.

5 With a #2 round hog bristle brush and raw umber mixed with a minimum of medium (1 part stand oil / 3 parts turpentine / and a few drops of Damar varnish) I sketch in the overall shape of the head and hat. When drawing with the brush train yourself to hold the brush near the end of the handle and not toward, or at, the ferrule. It will feel awkward for a little while but persevere because the dividends are significant. Good oil painting brushes are weighted so that they can be held at their ends allowing for fluidity of movement and expression All rights reserved.

6 Browline Base of the Nose Condyle After the arabesque (the whole outside shape of the head) has been established and its height/width proportions checked for accuracy I can now determine and indicate the major landmarks of the hat and head. Accurately striking the shape of the head requires training which is provided in both my Mastering Portrait Drawing: the frontal pose workshop and for those just starting out, my Beginning to Draw Workshop. The most important initial landmarks for portrait drawing are the brow line, base of the nose and condyle (the hinge of the jaw where it meets the ear lobe) All rights reserved.

7 UNDERPAINTING the optical grisaille Get this 3 hour instant download workshop for only $19.95! PLUS I ll include how to draw Clara Serena. That s a bonus portrait drawing workshop!!! Follow Michael as he guides you step-by-step through the traditional method of underpainting portraits in oil.

8 With the major initial facial landmarks set it is a fairly straightforward process to sketch in the actual features. Do your utmost to refrain from holding your brush near the ferrule it really doesn t take long to get used to drawing with the brush fully extended. If you make a mistake a rag kept close at hand can be used to wipe out any errant markings. But try to keep your wiping out to a minimum as it can lift off the delicate emulsion. Note: The emulsion is not bound into the acrylic prime which for a serious painting we should be using a chalk or oil primed ground. But as I ve said earlier, these are toss away exercises meant solely for skill building. On close examination you can see that the features are sketched in quite economically All rights reserved.

9 Still using the #2 round bristle brush I lightly scrumbled in the dark tones with a dryish raw umber. Use your medium sparingly: This is not watercolor painting. And, here, once again, we come to another fork in the road. For me the genius of northern Baroque painting (Rembrandt, Hals, Rubens to name just a few) was the nigh magical virtuousity of drawing with a brush. There is no faking it. The composition and subject is nailed down with a few economical strokes. There is no getting around the fact that one needs to draw well before beginning to paint. 90% of painting problems are always attributed to drawing problems All rights reserved.

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11 With red ochre I proceeded into the abozzo by both hatching and scrumpling. I worked fast and loose still using a #2 round bristle brush. Keep the paint somewhat dry and with a minimum of medium. The only exception to this was in the jowl where I needed a more translucent paint which was more diluted with medium All rights reserved.

12 Ivory Black snaps the sketch into place. But it needs to be applied with confidence; there is no second guessing here; no wiping out nor fudging about. Assess and apply is the name of the game All rights reserved.

13 Your choice of white can be either titanium, flake (Cremnitz), zinc or underpainting white. My preference is flake white. I find titanium a little too cool and harsh. As with Ivory Black, first assess then apply the white by touching it on rather than brushing. This is pretty difficult to articulate; it is somewhat similar to spotting with the kneaded eraser in portrait drawing which I demonstrate in my Drawing Children download course. A small oil sketch like this is meant to be worked premier coup first strike and should take about an hour from start to finish. The sole purpose is to develop your brush drawing skills so that you can tackle a canvas head-on and leave behind those timid, hesitant brush strokes All rights reserved.

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