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Portrait
Paintings
last
update: Feb - 18-
2008
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Most recent painting in this series
is shown first
and also added to the bottom
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2010 March The graphic looks better than the original because the head size could be smaller in the original. You can't beat the old classic standard of keeping the head smaller than life. My approach has changed over the years. |
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2010 Feb Back to Portrait studies
after two years absence. Not so flat as my
previous approach but adding a bit of modeling and
increasing the key increases the light reflectance off the painting
surface. Thinking of an
even closer approach which may force the face to become a portal to the
inner person which could also be referred to as the democratizaton of
the portrait into a universal life form.
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1964 This oil study has been badly damaged over the years. I found it - left in the care of one sibbling - face up covered in blotches of excrement and on the dirt floor of his shed. It it still existed. I cleaned it up as best I could. I painted it using vertical brush strokes. My objective was to create a unity through common direction of brush stroke. I see it now as an early example of my interest in colour trying to emerge from under a strong tonalist influence. To me it is still an old memory returned from a journey.
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| Note: although I sometimes reference current source artist inspirations I create a personal interpretation which may differ so much as to cause question as to how my painting relates to the source painting at that point the source is no longer relavent. |
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2005 My First portrait study was a small 8 x 10 female head profile oil on board painted in my late teens. A friend upon seeing the painting fell in love with the image. That incident told me something about the magical world of image making |
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2005 She is a painting a construct. She can be destroyed. No crime will have been committed if she were destroyed. She is only a painting. If I were to destroy her - something intangable even spiritual would be lost to me. Another with some of her strange power will not arrive untill 2007 with my painting of Green Eyes.
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| If it is true that every portrait is a self portrait then destroying a prortrait is akin to destroying the self. This raises the question: is every painting a projected form of self portrait? Is art then another form of the three eternal questions: who am I?, where am I?, what am I? |
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2005 It is a very loose sketchy style which I may play around with in the future. It has that life possible quality. I think in looking and sketching faces you soak up into yourself those attributes of life presence in outhers and that's what your mind dwells upon when struggling to create an image.
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20 x 16 acrylic on canvas |
2006 Feb
Continuing my flat shape studies
with a third version of Woman in a Yellow Hat. I used Malevich as
currenty referenced inspiration. The concept of broken colours should be explained. Primary colours are yellow, red, blue in decending tone from light to dark. Secondary colours are mixtures of any two primary colours eg. green equals yellow and blue. Tertiary colours are mixtures of any three primary colours eg. green and orange. Over the decades people changed the name tertiary to broken and used tertiary to mean the mixture of eg. green with yellow to produce a yellow green which used to be known as an intermediate colour. |
20x16 inches: acrylic on canvas |
2006 Sept Line is used in place of shading . All shapes are flat filled. I used Mendelson Joe a Toronto Portrait painter as currently referenced source inspiration. Interesting that my students many of whom are female saw the projected person as ugly and refused to paint her. They could not separate image representation (their idea of beauty) from exploration of shape and colour. |
20 x16in. acrylic on canvas |
2007 March The colour shapes have been kept flat in order to distance the memetic pull of portrait sitter object and retain a link to the artist driven painting medium and materials. Multiple use of chromatic crescendo has been introduced. Note red-violet / yellow-green for one. Western portrait painting incorporate the sitter's generic, cultural and individual attributes filtered through the portrait artist's temperment.
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| Green eyes has arrived. Preliminary sketches and reasearch have lain in my file for over a year waiting for her time. A desire on the part of my students brought about her arrival. She would be composed of simple shapes that my students could master. Is she looking at me? Am I looking at her? Has she become a mirror-like bridge to another part of myself. |
20 x16in. acrylic on canvas board |
2007 Sept Portraits are bascially measurement problems and as such are not generally considered creative. The more it looks like the sitter the less artistic content it contains. The portrait artist must balance creativity against measurement but the sitter is generally not cooperative and wants a photographic likeness. It is rare for a sitter to want artisitc content above photographic likeness. |
16x 20 inches: acrylic on canvas |
2007 Sept This example is still kept in a high tonal key using simple clean shapes but is more refined than the basic approach. Arranged in the modern style of full front pose but using the overlaping squares technique for composition. Camera about four (4) feet distant: set on auto. |
20x 16 inches: acrylic on canvas |
2007 Oct
# 1 I used a set of premixed colours to fill in shapes based upon form, shadow and arabesque to show my students that painting cleanly can result in an effective portrait. The redish violet hue on the shadow side introduces close tone painting in which one tone has a slightly different hue. This expands the colour vocabulary range. Keeping the highest tonal contrast in the eyes, nose and mouth area brings that triangular part of the face foreward. The close tone painting on the sides pushes the sides back. |
20x 16 inches: acrylic on canvas |
2007 Oct
# 2 Notice in the above portrait study that the eyes, nose and mouth are about equal contrast. In this portrait study the eyes are the strongest contrast with the mouth as secondary. The simple soft but flat treatment of hair and background provides a foil for the facial forms. I will use this contrast control approach in future portraits to enhance and suppress areas of the face in order to achieve a more pictorial presentation. |
20x 16 inches: acrylic on canvas |
2007 Oct
# 3 This head study of a senior presented numerous problems. Paint an older woman without the painting becoming an inventory of wrinkles and maintain a clean dignified appearance. I quickly learned that shading in the traditional maner muddied up the colours and shapes. Simplify the shapes and keep then clean using close tone painting. Put the detail in the eyes and lips. If the lips are gone keep the detail in the eyes they are the last to go.
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20x 16 inches: acrylic on canvas |
2007 Oct
# 4 Blending acrylic colours was done wet into wet directly on canvasboard. Before each session the painting surface was primed with a thin film of clear water A series of 8 premixed colour tones in small plastic jars with vaccum seal tops were used to facilitate the wet in wet technique as it was applied over 4 days. Ideas from Greek and Roman sculpture
were used to derive the facial forms.
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Click on this graphic to see a larger version. |
2007 Dec The colours are close to the original but the effect of the glowing light cobalt blude is lost in the small scale.. My interest has always been pulled towards flat colour shapes. So I questioned myself as to the most frequent graphic style that my brain had been exposed to as a growing child? The comic book came back as the answer. Thousands upon thousands of hours were spent hovering over comic books. As a product of pop culture I join forces wtih the flat comic book approach and have decided to explore its potential as a portrait painting style. Painting now becomes an arrangement of clean simple colour notes interacting with each other. . |
Photo DSLR Process: PSP-PX2 |
2007 Dec Contuining my experiments with simple coloured shapes has resulted in this portrait style which has its roots in the simple colour shapes of 20th century comic and advertising art as mentioned above. I find it interesting that my use of the front head view creates strong independent images. My images are not afraid to look you in the eye.. But Megan is an independent minded aspiring young writer with the skill to sublimate her emotions to the craft of writing. And because of her passion for bakeing she may end up writing books on bakeing. |
Photo DSLR Process: PSP-PX2 |
2008 Jan Violet graduated from university in math and physics in the 1930's. She taught physics at McMaster University during and after WW2 Married raised two children - one became an industrial processing consultant and ceo of a commercial enterprise and the other majored in computer science worked as a government consultant and computer services manager. Portrait of Megan: above: is Violets granddaughter. |
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2008 Jan I decided to play with a more traditional style composition. It gave me the opportunity to play with glazing which I had not done for a while. The next study that I am planning uses the traditional technique of glazing but the composition will be more modern |
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2008 Feb Ahhhh clean colours
again. Although the composition and colours are more
modern I did not use glazing. |
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2008 Feb My intent was to explore a clean flat
colour study and as such it is a success. It is a general likeness of Janet but it could have been more of a likeness if I had stuck to my full front view motif instead of departing for a little glamor which introduced more likeness problems which detract from my simple clean colours.. |
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2008 Feb There are some differences in the colours due to the lighting conditions under which the photos were taken. The left hand bar is supposed to be the light greenish used in the hair. But it did frame up nicely and also provides a colour record. |
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2008 Feb Reference Dec. portrait study no. 1 above. Am continuing to develop this simple line colour shape style. This latest version abstracts the subject further by incorporating french curve configurations into the linear pattern. This moves the composition into the architectural style category. It is interesting to imagine moving this approach closer to a kind of flat magic realism. |
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2008 Feb This was one of those play times when you just jump into your colour box and go. Parts of it were repainted over and over with at least 10 different tints befor it took shape You cannot predict how colours are going to interact before you put them down. Some people suffering from extreme cases of self delusions believe they can predict colour interactions in their imaginations and just copy the imagined colours onto their canvas. They consider themselves some type of super mental photocopier. If it wasn't for inexperienced people believing them it would be a pathetic joke.
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2008 Feb Am continuing to develop this simple line colour shape style. The mixing of clean colour shapes
that interact had become my latest concern. With each painting I am adding to my set of premixed colours so they can be played one against the other like musical notes. Like a musical composer I put down a colour and another and if they don't work then a revised sequence is created. |
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2008 Feb Based on my Sept 2007 Self Portrait. More colour less traditional form. |
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2010 Feb Back to Portrait studies
after two years absence. Not so flat as my
previous approach but still reducing the modeling and increasing the
key increases the light reflectance off the painting surface. Thinking of an even closer approach. The face becomes a portal to the inner person.
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2010 March The graphic looks better than the original because the head size could be smaller in the original. My approach has changed over the years. |
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