Figure Painting

This past week, I've been taking a figure painting class with Doug Anderson at the Hartford Art School. If you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen my daily posts this week. But here I'm going to dive a little further into my painting process. This process also applies to how I approach plein air painting in oil, though I took these figure paintings further than my plein air landscapes.

I'll be showing you some basic steps using a single painting. The model was a woman in a reclining type of pose. I chose a position where I could see the full figure, and her face was in profile.

I'm painting on an 11x14" canvas board, toned with burnt umber acrylic paint. I find that canvas can take more layers of paint than a gessoed masonite or MDF board in one sitting, so I prefer them for Alla Prima work.

The model poses for 20 minutes at a time. In the first session, I start with a drawing. I draw directly with paint, though you can also use vine charcoal at this stage. I find that vine charcoal mixes into my paint too much, so paint applied on top of paint is preferable. Also, I am using burnt sienna thinned to the consistency of melted butter with a mixture of liquin and turpenoid. I could write an entire blog post on figure drawing, and perhaps someday I will, but for now if you're interested in how to draw figures I recommend George Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life. It is a must in any figurative artist's library!

In the second session, after I have my basic drawing laid out, I lay in some basic shadows using burnt umber, thinned to the same melted butter consistency. At this point I've also fixed a few mistakes from the first drawing, lengthening the breasts & lowering the shoulder on the left. I use a rag to wipe away paint, as was the case with the shoulder.

My palette from bottom left to right: Ivory Black, Titanium White, Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Red Hue, Winsor Orange (above the cad red), Permanent Rose, Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber, Winsor Yellow, Lemon Yellow, French Ultramarine, Prussian Blue, and Viridian.

In the same session as laying in the basic shadows, I begin to mix my flesh tones. Here is a photo of my palette. To mix my flesh tones, I begin with titanium white and yellow ochre as a base. Then I mix in some cadmium red hue, and create an average mid tone for the flesh. From there I separate that mid tone in two, and add more cad red to one for a pinker mid tone. Now I have two middle value colors, which I then lighten with more white. For shadows, I mix in to those mid tones with some raw umber for greener, cooler shadows, and to that I add some burnt umber for an even darker, but warmer dark. For my darkest value, I mix burnt umber and ultramarine blue for a more natural looking black than the ivory black pigment.

These colors are averages of what I'm seeing on the model. It's important to remember here that I'm attempting to mix what I see, and that flesh varies greatly all over a single figure. Furthermore, the same flesh will appear differently under different lighting or in another environment. When I paint my illustrations, I consider the color gamut for my paintings when painting flesh. There is truly no single 'flesh' color. 

This next step is after a few more session, where I've blocked in the basic averages of flesh that I mixed. I've also blocked in some of the background elements. This pose made me recall the work of Frank Frazetta, so I started to think about suggesting a certain type of environment. The red of the drapery & the Frank Frazetta image in my mind also inspired the earthy color scheme. Now it's time for lunch!

After an hour break, the paint starts to dry up quite a bit, and is ready for more applications of paint. Everything up to this point has been pretty thin, and I follow the rule of adding increasingly thick paint on top of thinner layers. An easy saying to remember is; "If it's thick it will stick, if it's thin it'll mix in."

Wednesday's finished painting

This is the finished painting, after an 8 hour day and around 6-7 hours of actual painting time. You can see that after the block in, I added more variations in color to the flesh by mixing in my other pigments with those average mixes I originally made. I also continue to push the values as I shift the colors around. 

I'm also conscious of keeping my edges harder where I want the eye to focus (her torso & face) and softer where elements start to blend together (her calf and foot, and the background elements). I'm also painting what I see in terms of values, but I push and pull them as needed. I'm conscious of keeping the edges of the painting dark so you're eye doesn't run out of the picture. Notice how I also cast her foot and calf into shadow. This spotlight effect is an old trick from the Baroque era.

Monday's painting

On the first day, I tried to paint the figure and background as close to life as I could.

Tuesday's painting

On Tuesday we began to add props, so I started to deviate from painting everything exactly as I saw it. I began to control the colors of the background elements, and suggested some sort of story. I added an expression of fatigue to my figure, aimed his sight at the bronze vessel, and added smoke coming out of the vessel.

Thursday's painting

Friday's still life

Friday's figure painting

On Friday there was a snow storm in the morning, and our original model was unable to come in. Around 11am we set up a brief still life, and I sketched from that for about an hour and a half. In the afternoon, another model was able to come in on short notice, so we had two hours to paint her. Those paintings are left largely unfinished, so they show a good midway point in my process.

Next week I'll be posting the second part of my series documenting my illustration for Spectrum. If you haven't read the first part yet, check out last week's post!