It is father’s day as I write this post. I had a call from one daughter and a text from the other. I can’t tell you how much that means to me, especially since I have no children of my own. I’ve always been sensitive about being a step father (one of those identity-shifty things, you know – see The Identity Shift Project). Thank you Sarah and Bethany.
Today’s experiment:
I am still reviewing the photographs I took last November on our visit to see my older brother, Mike. Mike is autistic, low functioning, nonverbal and lives in a geriatric group home. I don’t get to the east coast much and I was happy that my younger brother’s schedule opened up enough for him to take our mother and me to see Mike, while I was out there.
The basis for the painting below is a blurry picture I took of my mother and Mike. Today’s watercolor experiment began, as did yesterday’s, with a fairly detailed sketch. My goal was to use shading of colors to gain some amount of three-dimensionality in the faces. I also thought about the composition. I heard somewhere that two objects in a composition doesn’t work as well as three or more., butI thought that I could catch some of the dynamic (or lack thereof) of the interaction between the two figures on my picture plane.
Mother and Child
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Paper
I am satisfied with the dynamic between the two figures in the actual painting. (I am disappointed with the reproduction presented here, however.) I do wish that I could have attained a greater tonal variation, as I did not get the depth I was looking for in either the faces or in the picture plane. Perhaps if I washed the background a couple of more times with Warm Sepia, the figures in front would be projected forward to a greater extent. I did try an extreme darkening of the left side of Mike’s face. I chickened out at the end and lightened it.
I thought I could finesse the composition and use the angle of my mother’s head to draw the viewers eye into the picture. Together with the angle of the hand on the right hand side of the picture, I tried to set up a triangular organization within the picture plane. I’m not sure if this was successful.
More practice is in order. I should probably work on one portrait at a time, since with two or more subjects in one painting, the chances of mucking up one of them is virtually assured.
What I like about this dual portrait is that you have captured your mother’s and brother’s expressions really well. I know it seems like an odd thing to say perhaps considering I have neither seen the original photo, or met your subjects. But I refer to the subtle dynamic between both subjects that I find very endearing about this piece, that is to say that their expressions aren’t flat. Giving life to a portrait is something that I know can be difficult to do. You’ve done a great job Jack. Nice character study. Also, the way you distance subject from background is to leave a narrow aura, or highlight between the two. You notice where the white of the paper beneath is showing around the edges in places of your mother’s hair and, your brother’s arm and, how that foregrounds them. It’s a trick I use when I do my portraits in graphite, it also happens to be the way the human eye sees things, as if there were a feint heat haze around objects which gives the sense of a depth of field. Mind you, that could just be peculiar to me! 🙂
WR
YF
M
Thank you, M. I think you’re right. The expressions are the dynamic factor in this study. My aim is to somehow break the space barrier and have my two-dimensional picture plane appear to project depth. From what I’ve read of Hans Hofmann, the use of perspective only allows depth to be portrayed into the picture plane. He used the juxtaposition of colors to portray depth. I think that if I could make a cubist rendering of a portrait, that would allow me to see how to get more depth in my portraits. As for the background, I tried to use that as a design element. A darker background without the brush details as the are currently, would probably diminish the impact of the study.
Thank you for your insightful comments. I appreciate them a lot.
WR
YF
J