Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 9)

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I will have to delay my work on the painting for a short while. I want to use the panel-- in its present, unfinished state -- in an exhibition (and tempera painting demonstration) at Gainesville State College, Georgia. This current photo reflects continued progress to refine the local colors of the tubes and other objects as they gradually evolve from the monochrome underpainting that defined basic volumes and space. When I resume work on the panel, I'll articulate further distinctions of the objects in the pile, and move from washes and glazes into more linear brushwork and hatching.
See you in about a month...

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 8)

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Unfortunately, not a lot of time to paint today, but I decided to use my limited time in the studio to begin giving the tubes their "indigenous" colors. Some of the tubes are old and grubby, mingling all the colors from Ole's handling of them and transmogrifying into a kind of mongrel brown. I'll get to that as a last touch, though.

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 7)

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Still working to bring depth and volume to the rendering, I alternate between adding light and dark washes. The red underpainting peeks through a little more strongly than I'll want in the end, but you can see how it imbues a warm glow to the cooler grays and browns that will predominate the colors in the finished painting.

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 6)

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I used tints of ivory black and zinc white to begin giving color to the metal tubes of oil paint and to cool the shadows they cast on the work table. The same color is in the floor and wall beyond the table. A little green earth is washed over the round glass palette, and I'm using a greenish raw umber to continue modeling the details in the big pile.

Detail

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 5)

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I've started applying egg tempera washes over the casein underpainting. First, however, I sized the casein work with a couple of layers of dilute egg yolk wash, unpigmented. Next, I laid down a loose glaze of raw sienna (a golden brown variety). I then modeled some of the middle values in darker but still transparent raw sienna and verdaccio giallo. Finally, I reinforced the lighter values with buff titanium (a light tan-hued white pigment.) I'll bring up the lights a little more strongly and start applying washes of grays, blues, and greens over the composition. I'll push toward more natural colors yet try to keep the treatment a little soft-edged, brushy, and transparent at this early stage.

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 4)

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The painting after more modeling in Venetian red, ivory black, and titanium white washes.

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 3)

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I'm starting to shape the tubes of paint in the picture with reinforcing washes of ivory black and Venetian red, still in casein. I want to bring out their overlapping crumpled forms, of course, but also try to impart a sense of spatial recession by varying the value contrasts from front of table to back. I'll take this stage of the process a good bit farther, remaining essentially monochromatic, as I resolve the underpainting before moving on to naturalistic colors.

Detail

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 2)

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I finished working over all the chalk transfer with diluted black casein. I really just wanted to establish the contours of this jumble of forms. Later, I'll model the range of lights and darks. On top of my linear outline I washed a couple of passes of Venetian red casein.

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 1)

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This is a "still life" from a corner of Richard Olsen's studio: the painter's work table and palette. My panel is a commercially prepared support, rabbitskin-glue gesso on Duron Masonite. It was made by an Athens, GA based company, Realgesso, and given to me by them to try out. (Thanks, Howard!) It's a small one, 8 x 10 inches. This first photo shows the initial processes in my painting technique. The faint red outlines are red chalk transfers from my drawing study. On top of that are contours in black casein wash that strengthen the chalk lines.

Richard Olsen in His Studio II (work in progress, 7)

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The finished painting. I came back to the panel today after a short respite. I worked to clean up the edges of shapes, and intersections, and tried to bring more fleshy warm tones to his head (while still keeping it bathed in shadow.) I softened a few of the shadows across his face and made minor adjustments to his features. It's a near likeness, but not exactly right. These photos, again, don't accurately reproduce the color range in the painting. The darks in the face should be slightly more reddish-orange; conversely, the white background should be less red. The pale green earth/verdaccio glazes fade away in the scan.
The detail below shows the brushwork better. For a sense of scale, the head is about 2-1/2 inches from top of hair to bottom of chin.

Richard Olsen in His Studio II (work in progress, 6)

Step 6

The painting is almost finished. I lightened the white wall in selected areas using a scumble of zinc white and verdaccio. I softened the contrasts within the yellow painting behind his head by washing over the darks with slightly lighter versions of themselves, and glazing over the lightest areas with barely darker colors. I also lightened the broad yellow field, in general. (I'd like the rectangle to hover about his head like a thought balloon, or halo, but I still need it to sit back in space behind him.) The most obvious change since the last post is the stronger modeling on Olé's head and shoulder. This was done through short linear strokes of opaque paint, following facial surface planes. I used Indian red and titanium white on the face and hair, greenish raw umber and white for the lab coat. After heightening the flesh tones, I glazed the bright areas with a thin cinabrese to subdue the contrast a little. I also glazed the brighter umber highlights on the shoulder with a mixture of raw umber, greenish umber, and bianco de Vicenza. The latter pigment has a very subtle, warm hue and almost no opaque capacity. In tempera it is a useful glazing color to impart warmth to cooler tones. It also provides a delicate cloudiness that can help to soften focus and articulate a sense of space.
I'll probably now let the painting rest for a day or two before making final touches.

Richard Olsen in His Studio II (work in progress, 5)

Step 5

Everything is touched with basic local colors, and the modeling of volumes is fairly close to where it needs to be. I can now start to finesse the color and value relationships.
A couple of comments about the composition: The squiggles in the background are strips of masking tape that Olé uses to create sharp edges in his work. They are stuck to the studio wall after being stripped from canvases in progress. Interestingly, though he seldom leaves the actual tape on the surface of the painting, Olé often adds simple, but illusionistic painted renderings of tape strips in his compositions. In his studio, some walls are covered with clear polyethylene sheeting to make removal and reuse of the tape easier. The plastic sheets make a nice reflective sparkle along their creases, but I may not include that detail in this small painting.
Olsen is a retired professor of art and in his classes he cautioned against certain awkward compositional elements that halt the eye's movement around the image in a detrimental way. One of his bugaboos is the "triangle in the corner." As an homage to his teaching, I positioned the stretcher bar and brace of a canvas leaning against his studio wall to bear a literal corner triangle down upon his back and shoulder.

Richard Olsen in His Studio II (work in progress, 4)

Step 4

I'm using glazes of the pigment cinabrese to model the face. It's a pale, warm red earth color that's very good for rendering flesh tones. With multiple applications, I go over the entire face and hair with the color -- straight pigment but quite dilute -- while allowing the verdaccio underpainting to remain mostly untouched in the darkest shadows such as the creases in the face and other features. For the lighter passages, I added a small amount of titanium white to the cinabrese glaze. I'm using that slightly more opaque (and lighter value) red with a dry brush and pointed stroke to follow the cross contours of the face and further bring the head into relief. I want to draw everything into resolution slowly, though, and prolong a diaphanous color treatment so that later, more direct paint will indicate mass and give the impression of spatial projection. In a manner similar to the painting on the head, I've started to model the brown lab coat with applications of greenish raw umber and white.

Richard Olsen in His Studio II (work in progress, 3)

Step 3

I continue to lay in additional color glazes, modifying the forms, deepening the colors, and adding detail. I still want to keep the surface open and porous, but I'm starting to use small amounts of titanium white in the color mixtures to make the colors slightly more opaque where I want the objects to solidify and pull forward in space.

Richard Olsen in His Studio II (work in progress, 2)

Step 2

I have begun to lay in "local" colors in semi-transparent glazes of egg tempera: yellow ochre, ivory black, raw umber, verdaccio, and Vagone green, all tinted with varying amounts of zinc white. Zinc is the most transparent pure white pigment, and thus does not obscure the underpainting. The head took several glazes of straight green earth, without any white added. Before jumping to these egg tempera washes, I sized the casein underpainting with several thin coats of dilute yolk and water to cut the absorbency of the casein and permit the initial tempera glazes to flow on a little more easily. I'll continue to refine the image's colors and details with mostly transparent or translucent glazes, and build up to more opaque passages towards the end.

Richard Olsen in His Studio II (work in progress, 1)

Step 1

This painting of the artist Richard Olsen is smaller than one I completed a couple of years ago, and depicts Olé in a more casual, candid pose. It's a very modestly sized panel, 8 x 6 inches, made by True-Gesso Panels in Santa Fe. I had begun it as a demonstration for an egg tempera workshop I participated in at the High Museum in 2006. After showing the students how to transfer an image and begin an underpainting, I set the panel aside until today when I rediscovered it in my studio. The photo above shows a continuation of the initial underpainting in casein, in ivory black, Venetian red, titanium white, and green earth. At this stage the image is somewhat loose and brushy (for its scale) and is mainly rendered in dry brushwork and washes.

Jeffrey Whittle in His Studio (work in progress, 19)

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Finished. These photos reproduce the painting's actual colors a bit more faithfully. Surprisingly, I got better color results using four 60-watt incandescent bulbs to light the painting than with previous setups using twin 500-watt tungsten lamps or natural illumination (northern light around 2 pm.) Go figure. The camera, by the way, is a several-years-old Sony 4.0 mp Cyber-shot. This painting, at 21 x 16 inches, is slightly smaller than the previous example on the blog.

Jeffrey Whittle in His Studio (work in progress, 18)

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I've finally gotten all the elements "filled in." Of course, I've tried to make measured decisions along the way, but now I can truly gauge how each component works with the others rather than simply anticipate how they might function together. In addition to working on the likeness (still a bit to go there), I've been making minor adjustments to the color or value of several of the objects in the room. For instance, I highlighted the wall behind Jeffrey's head and torso for a little more contrast. The little red thing in the lower left corner took a glaze of cadmium red light to warm it up somewhat. Next, and lastly, I need to clean up edges of forms and, especially, the intersections and overlaps of elements.


I moved Whittle's proper left eye up slightly. Its position is better, less droopy, but I still have to sharpen up the edges of its eyelid and cornea. I purposely left everything a little fuzzy as I tried to find where the eye should go. His nose was staring to grow a bit too bulbous; I slimmed it down. I'm also in the midst of making little changes to his mouth. Jeffrey's lips have a natural pursed or puckered shape. I just laid a pale pinkish wash over his mouth to soften the contours so that I can redraw the break between upper and lower lips and model them better. I'll probably raise the proper left corner of his mouth as I did his eye.

Jeffrey Whittle in His Studio (work in progress, 17)

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Jeffrey Whittle in His Studio (work in progress, 16)

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Jeffrey Whittle in His Studio (work in progress, 15)

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Details of Whittle's art in the painting. His work is acrylic over topographic and navigational maps, mounted on board or canvas.

Jeffrey Whittle in His Studio (work in progress, 14)

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Detail showing the green earth and verdaccio underpainting on the face and hair.

Detail of the modeling on the jacket in shades of ivory black over morellone (red-violet iron oxide.)

Jeffrey Whittle in His Studio (work in progress, 13)

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Jeffrey Whittle in His Studio (work in progress, 12)

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