My younger brother doesn’t remember much of our older brother Mike. Michael is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. He went away to Willowbrook when I was about 10 years old, which means younger brother (YB) was about 6. My parents told me that they tried to shield us from Michael. It didn’t work for me, but I guess they had better success with YB; of course I’m not sure what issues remain outstanding for him due to Mike’s influence.  YB doesn’t talk much about it.

Today’s experiment:

In reviewing the photographs from our last family visit to see Mike in his geriatric group home, I found a couple of Mike, YB and me.  The partially finished painting below was taken from one of them.

I sketched each of the three faces is more detail than usual. My goal in this experiment was to use shading to create a sense of volume in each of the three portraits. Cézanne called this technique ‘modeling’.

I used my ‘Umpteen Hundred Watercolor Mixing Recipes’ book for the first time, to look up how to mix a flesh tone. Although it was a simple mixture of Yellow Ochre and Cadmium Red Light, for the basic formula, I had to improvise. With the absence of Cadmium Red Light, I used Cadmium Red as a substitute. I thought all I would have to do would be to add more white to obtain the color swatch in the book. I had to add gobs of white, and several different yellows to get a passable color. The book suggested adding white for a lighter tone and Hooker’s Green for the darker tones.

Three Brothers
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

At this stage, the painting does not quite deliver the appearance of volume in the faces. There are some problems with this: 1) the faces are not really composed of volumes of any depth, that is most of the features are flat; 2) the distances over which the tonal range should change, are small; therefore the shading should change more abruptly.   Perhaps I can remedy this as I complete the work.

Portraits are difficult for me. Three portraits on a one canvas increase the chances for error by three orders of magnitude, it seems.

Perhaps the reader is thinking, “What an odd composition. That surely is a creative way to arrange a watercolor portrait.”  I must confess that I was just trying to capture the essence one of the photos from the visit: