Portrait of 3 Daughters
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Early February, 2002, we discuss doing a portrait of three
young women. The mother has provided me with resource photos.
The primary photo, which I will use, is vertical, but we want
the final portrait to be horizontal.
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I scan the photo into my PC and proceed to manipulate the
figures to make it horizontal. We have decided on a 24"
by 36" canvas.
This will be the basic composition.
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Here is the draughtsman table with the drawing in progress.
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And a closer view of the drawing.
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| 2/24/02 - I wasn't pleased with the placement,
so I moved the daughters further apart and began redrawing the
sketch. This is "double-work" but is good practice
for "seeing" the forms. |
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| 3/3/02 -Having felt the basic flow and dimension
of the piece by doing the drawing, I now lightly transfer the
grid to the canvas, drawing the basic outlines with pencil and
then paint as a wash. |
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| 3/3/02 - This re-drawing is done with a mix of
burnt umber and ultramarine blue, in a monochrome wash (lots
of turpentine, no medium.) |
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| 4/30/02 - Sidetracked by taxes and bills and am
just now getting the next stage posted, although I've worked
on it slowly. It's in a "cartoon" stage, the point
when I wonder whether I really have the right to consider myself
an artist. |
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| 5/19/02 - This is the next stage of the painting.
Still in the "cartoon" stage. I am moving left to
right across the painting, trying to keep the girls in about
the same stage of development. I like the background in a darker
shade (though perhaps less brown) because it sets off the bright
skin tones. |
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| 5/27/02 - Today I worked mainly brightening the
middle girl's face and changing the background. |
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| 6/2/02 - This weekend I worked mainly on the left
and middle girls and on the background. Making the background
dark lets the skin tones glow and become the focus of the painting.
At this stage, painting goes slower and changes will not be
as obvious. But the sisters begin to look less like a cartoon
of themselves. |
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| 6/16/02 - I made a lot of headway, working glazes
over the face of the right-hand face, working on the texture
of the middle girl's dress (which will later be darkened again
by glazing) and the bright white folds of the right-hand girl's
blouse and the background -- which is developing layers and
richness. . . |
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| 7/15/02 - The colors in this photo look warmer
because the picture is taken inside. But I had warmed up the
picture a bit, adding glazes to the background to dull down
the purple. |
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7/28/02 - Now I'll be working slower on parts of the painting,
primarily trying to get the features right.
8/4/02 - I softened this young woman's features, using a
more casual stroke.
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8/4/02 - Second, I worked on the girl on the left. (Since I
am lefthanded, it is easier to work across the canvas from right
to left. Otherwise, there is a tendency to smear paint on the
area I've just painted.) |
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8/4/02 - I next adjusted the center girl's face. I don't
feel that I have as good a likeness yet. Her face is actually
thinner. And perhapsthe mouth is smaller. Interesting how
the slightest change can remarkably change the portrait.
(This is the stage of the protrait when I go through agonies
of self'doubt. How could I have ever thought I was an artist?)
And yet, I tackle the next project with as much interest and
ferocity.
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| 10/25 - OK, so I was out of town and then buried
in backlogs and this portrait got delayed. Here I have worked
on the middle daughter's face. Her head in its entirety is actually
slightly smaller than the two other sisters andthe features
smaller than I had painted in the picture shown above. While
the detail to the right is still loose, I have made the corrections
that put it in the right perspective. |
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| 10/25 - This shows the relative development at
this stage of the portrait |
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 11/02/02
- Still struggling with the features on the middle girl's face.
Her features are a bit more elfin than her sisters' and my tendency
was to "normalize" them by making her head and features
the same size as her sisters. The origianl photo shows the difference.
This, by the way, is one of the reasons that undertaking a portrait
with two or more people in it is more difficult than with a
single person. Even Rembrandt had trouble with it. In the Night
Watchmen, the story is, his sitters were not happy at all because
all were not given equal billing. |
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| 12/22/02 - The final stage of the portrait is
a process of slowly working towards a likeness. I have not included
all lthe stages because the difference from stage to stage would
be slight. As of this date, after some careful revisions, I
consider the portrait near done. It might have been done on
the weekend of 12/22, had the storm clouds not come up to obscure
the clear winter light. |
| Path to gif
animation (Caution, this is a large GIF file and will take
a while to open with a 56K modem.) |
1/13/03 - Here is the final portrait. |
