Re-starting in Lockdown with my newest project. No live portrait sitters possible, so I am beginning work from photographs of Famous People and their Pets.
The idea came from two pictures. The first is the well known picture of the composer Vaughan Williams. Elderly man, tweed suit, looking into the camera in a suitably serious and composer-ish way, but I recently saw the uncropped photograph, and he has a cat on his knee.
A totally different view of the man. I wanted to paint it.
The second, and the one I began with was the artist Gustav Klimt. Looking through a book of his beautiful gilded ladies with their inscrutable faces, I found an old black and white picture of the artist himself. He is standing in the garden in a crumpled smock, looking diffidently into the camera lens and holding a black and white cat. Apparently there was always a resident cat in the studio, simply called Katz.
It is not easy to work on a portrait from a black and white photograph, especially an old one. The photographer tries to create shape and drama in their portrait with lighting, so there are often areas of deep shadow. Features disappear into it. It needs quite a lot of imagination to find the form and colour for a painted portrait.
(The original photograph is now in the National Art Museum, Vienna and was taken in 1916)
I began with an Indigo monochrome watercolour sketch, rather heavy handed but I am afraid I am rather heavy handed with watercolour!.
From this I could see that I should include more of the artist in the portrait, so that it was more obvious that he holds a cat in his arms, and not just a disembodied head!
For the watercolour sketch I use Fabriano 300gm. watercolour paper. This is fine for general use. It has a good surface which stands up to a lot of water, and doesn’t cockle. If I am doing a watercolour portrait I use a heavierSandersons Waterford paper 640 lb if I can afford it, Watercolour paint – Schminke Indigo. (I began with a set of White Knight watercolours. These are about the cheapest of the quality paints, and give very good results. As I have needed colours not in their range I have bought Schminke tubes, which are lovely but more on a parr pricewise with makes like Winsor and Newton.)
The next stage was the finished pastel portrait, using soft pastels on Sanded paper.
Pastels – for the finished portrait. I use a mixture of Shcminke and Sennelier soft pastels. My favourites are the Sennelier. They are very soft and therefore expensive to use, but they feel lovely and velvety when you apply them and cover beautifully. The Shminke pastels are a little firmer, and also give good cover. I should mention Unison and Jacksons’, but I find that the slightly larger size for me makes them more difficult to use. They are firmer and can be used for line or soft work.
The paper is Touch by Canson. This is a heavyweight ‘sanded’ surface paper, which is ideal with soft pastels. It does have a surface like fine sandpaper, and really grips the pastel. Others I have tried are Artfix, which is very similar, and Uart which is sold in several grades from coarse to very fine. I find only the finer ones, 400 + suit the portraits that I do. The only disadvantage with these papers is that they do eat up the soft pastels. I keep a set of Jackson’s basic cheaper range, harder pastels to use for backgrounds, and sometimes clothing.
So, my first effort at a famous person with pet. I am still clumsy with soft pastels, and a bit scared of them. They are quite difficult to control, but the colours are vivid and fresh., and you can just pick up a pastel stick and Go. No tiresome mixing, no even more tiresome cleaning up afterwards. No worrying what it will look like when it is dry. It can be disheartening to do a quite a good recognisable drawing, and then spoil it with less than expert colouring, but I am sticking with pastels and hopefully, improving.
My next try will be from a photograph of David Bowie with his cat.