Small Still Lives- Part 2

So... More still life value studies this week and I think a bit of a turning point. The more I do these the more I realise how useful they are. The third drawing isn't as successful as the 2nd one; I struggled to draw it that small and could probably have used going up a size, that meant I got a bit too fussy with it and lost my way about half way through.

But the second one I like quite a bit, I think it's the first drawing where what I'm trying to learn has actually started to work. I've finally dialled back that intense graphic line I seem to have and it looks much more natural to me; I am drawing more with value and tone, not line. More to the point whether I'm there or not, I seem to be following a much better process for drawing in general and I'm pretty happy with that, it means progress and this is quite a personal step forward.
The 2 drawings below have been drawn in the space of 1 week and it's amazing how many different things I have been able to try just by keeping the drawing small and the subject simple. The proof is in the pudding, these small studies are definitely working. Not only that but I feel that this will help a lot the next time I go to a class- I have a tendancy to not know what approach to use or even what pencil- these small studies help me figure out what works best.

Squeeze My Lemon

Just when you think you're progressing, you try drawing a lemon and it all goes to hell. I'm still directing all my attention to studying tonal values which is why I've moved to these small charcoal studies. These drawings are about 4"x3", part of me thinks this might actually be too big as I still catch myself getting bogged down in the details; even though I know not to do this. To be fair I'm a lot better at this than I used to be , I at least have some sort of approach now and I know what I'm looking for.

The first lemon is quite honestly a complete crime against humanity, moving to the second I had started to feel that maybe my paper was too dark. I had to add chalk to lighten the ground to the correct value and I'd prefer not to do this as the more chalk you add the greater the risk of everything getting mushy. On the 3rd try I moved to white paper; much better but I think I got the local value of the lemon too dark.

Below is a step by step of how I'm handling these sketches. Step 1 is the basic line drawing and shadow block in, Step 2 develops these shadows slightly and adds the objects local colour values and Step 3 is where I introduce black pastel to really bring out the darks. My Step 2 is a bit overworked and I'm overblending the final product a bit but because I'm mostly concerned with tonal value at the moment I'm not too worried about this. I'm sticking to willow charcoal for the time being though I'm finding it wipes off too easilly, so when it comes to placing the darkest darks I use pastel or conte crayon so that it stays whilst I work on the rest of the picture. Not too pleased with these but I am happy with how I'm starting to see all the different tonal values- this is improving and I think it has clicked.

Masterworks Tone Study Thumbnails

This week's update is a couple of small thumbnail studies from 2 of the Masters of painting; Rembrandt and Vermeer. These are only a few inches accross and are really designed as quick studies in how the Masters structured tone in their paintings. As I am mainly concerning myself with the study of tonal values at the moment it seemed liked a good idea (that and my teacher suggested it). I'm not sure how many of these I'll do, maybe just a couple more and then onto still lives. What's interesting is that not only do you have tone to contend with in the object you are painting but also in the picture as a whole. Both of these pictures have lost edges and sharp edges if you notice and this is something I will be using in my own paintings.

Boring Old Spheres?

Well no, what you are looking at here is the palette system for skin tones (previous post) put into pratice. You can attempt to paint a portrait without any kind of system but it helps a lot to pre mix the palette like this because it tells you exactly what value should be placed on any given plane of the head.
I felt that I had painted the first sphere too yellow with too high a saturation/ chroma. So I decided to go and look at some paintings both in a gallery and online. Now I'm not saying online portraits have accurate colours, they don't but as an exercise I felt it was quite useful- just to get an idea. I picked portraits from a few different artists and analysed the colours and values. I am sure some of the values on these are wrong but it did show me that I was closer than I thought, especially on the Sargent painting.
Sphere 3 is meant to to be closer to the De Laszlo portrait colours. I did this one slightly differently by painting an underlayer in white first. I wasn't really trying to do a Grisaille, I had found with the first sphere it was difficult to paint the lighter value colors without the dark canvas showing through.

Half way through painting I struggled to get close to his choice of colours which tells me that he might be using a different red and maybe yellow- I couldn't get the bright orange you can see just before the face goes into shadow. There's a lost edge on this sphere too as it goes into shadow, which I think really helps it look three dimensional. Next up is some rough small portrait copies I think.

Colour Palette

Not a great picture I'm afraid but shown below is the current colour palette that I am using to paint with. It is split up into 9 rows of 3; earth colours, reds and greys. My palette here is slightly incorrect because the earth colours should be at the top, one or two of my values jump a bit too far as well but essentially, this is what it looks like.

I changed this slightly from the version that I was taught by mixing Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine for the grey strain, this gives a blue/gray rather than the more neutral grey you get from mixing Ivory black and Raw Umber.