Grids and drawing chalk

About a month ago I decided to do a copy of Baburen's "The Procuress". This is as far as I've gotten. It's a 40"x 42" canvas with a light gray priming. The original painting is in the Museum of Fine arts, Boston, but I've never actually seen it. It used to belong to Vermeer, and it's in the background, hanging on the wall, in 2 of his paintings. When I was learning to draw, this was one of my inspirations; I liked the large, simplified shapes - it seemed a good way to begin a drawing. I also got the idea of using white drawing chalk on a light gray canvas from him! It might be a little hard to see , but this is apparently how Vermeer started a painting.
I found blackboard chalk to be too coarse and too soft, so I started making my own.Here's how - put one teaspoon of rabbitskin glue size in a small cup and then add another teaspoon of water so you have a size that's half the strength of what you would use to size a canvas or make gesso. Slowly add some powdered chalk (whiting), stopping to mix every now and then, until you have a thick sticky paste. Add more chalk til you get a dry paste, then take it out of the cup and roll it between your hands. Roll it into a cigar shape then fold it back into a ball; repeat a few times until it's smooth like soft modeling clay. If it's sticky, add more chalk. If it's crumbly, add a drop or two of water. Then take small amounts and roll into sticks of chalk and leave to dry overnight.
If it's too soft, use a stronger glue size. If it's too hard, add more water when diluting the size.

Gilbert Stuart

Here's a picture of Gilbert Stuart's portrait palette as described by Matthew Jouett in his manuscript, "Notes on Painting" from conversations with Gilbert Stuart in 1816. Along the top edge are his 7 basic colors - beginning over the hand(right to left) - antwerp blue(prussian blue), flake white, yellow ochre, vermillion, madder lake, burnt umber, and ivory black. Going down below the ochre are the flesh colors - ochre and white(pale), vermillion and white(pale), ochre white and vermillion(pale), vermillion white and a little lake(deep), vermillion and ochre equal parts(for reflections), and lake and a little vermillion(for the blood). And 4 more mixtures, below the top row, from right to left - white and blue, ochre and black(for a green), black and vermillion, and burnt umber and lake(for deepest shadows and glazing)

These are the real pigments. I actually have a tube of vermillion, Winsor Newton cambridge(their student line back in the 60's), and a tube of Winsor Newton genuine madder lake. Vermillion and white makes a cool pink, so, while cadmium red lt. looks like vermillion, cadmium red medium makes a much closer match when mixed with white.

There's a whole lot more valuable information on portrait painting in this manuscript. Here's how I found it. I had a book from the library on Gilbert Stuart - one of those big picture books. The Bibliography listed a book with the description that it included the complete manuscript written by one of his students - notes on Stuart's palette and painting methods. The book was titled "Gilbert Stuart and his Pupils" by John Hill Morgan; Matthew Harris Jouett. So I did a google search for - find in a library. The first site that came up was www.worldcat.org. You put in the title, select the book from the search results, then enter your zip code, and you get a list of libraries in your area that have the book. If none are real close, you can probably get an inter-library loan from your local library - they'll get the book for you! I was lucky - the book was at a college library less than 2 miles away.I went there the next day after work.

100 Faces

About 2 years ago, driving home from work, I was listening to an interview with a poet who just got published. He had a project of writing 100 poems. You had to write at least 100 poems to consider yourself a poet, he had been advised. I had been thinking about portraits as a source of income for a painter; so I came up with the idea of painting or drawing 100 faces to consider myself a portrait painter.I'm starting to get serious about this, but I'm going to have to add every face I've ever done to complete my collection of 100 Faces.

To begin my collection here's a charcoal sketch of Queen Nafatiti done from a plaster cast. I was 16, in art school, my first try was very awkward, then I got into drawing mode and did this one - I could draw!

Here's 2 more, painted last week, underpaintings in black and white. I think I like this method, but I haven't done too much of it. The one is St. Michael after Veronese. The original painting was cut up into 4 pieces - this was the last fragment found. The other is my friend Rick, from a picture he took of himself hiking the Appalachian Trail (yes, from Maine to Georgia). I used a light grey canvas and put in the drawing with white chalk( an old method) and used a grid to transfer the drawing.

Plein air painting

This is the last painting I've finished, and that was almost a year ago. It's the Esopus Creek, Saugerties, N.Y. , painted on location the summer of 2005. I went kayaking here. Saugerties is near Woodstock and not far from Kaaterskill Clove, where Thomas Cole painted.
I always search around for a good composition, but this view was right there in the front yard of the cabin we were staying at. It's looking north with the late afternoon sun on the opposite bank. I set up my french easel; I had a 12x18 canvas, and I put in the drawing and shading using burnt umber and mineral spirits like watercolor. I layed out the colors on my palette and proceeded to get lost in the process of trying to get it all down on the canvas. Three hours later it was a bit sketchy, but a good start.I've always had to finish up the sketchier parts of my plein air landscapes later on, so I took a bunch of reference photos.
Seven months later I restretched the painting to make it12x16, cutting off 2" on the right. I corrected the color of the rock face on the opposite bank and painted over the shrubs on the lower left bank. It sat like that for 2 years, but I finally finished it up. I reinstated the shrubs in the foreground, got some detail in the trees on the opposite bank, and finished the overhanging leaves on the left. I wasn't sure if I had captured the monumental rock wall, so I put in the boaters as a reference point for the scale of things. Plein air painting brings back many good memories, and I'll be coming back to this subject again.

I am Daniel Charles Sickles. For me, oil painting is following a path with heart. Hand painted pictures are rewarding for the artist, but a lot of work goes into producing them. I have come to realize that I am much more a knowledgeable man than a man of action. I dream of being a prolific artist, but so far that hasn't happened. Hopefully this blog will inspire me to get to work!
Here's some of the topics I'll be writing about: plein air painting, values, composition, charcoal drawing, ways of starting and methods of painting, priming a canvas, gesso, gilding, the computer as a tool for the artist, restoration, the palettes used by artists such as Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully, Velasques, Canaletto, and much more!
This post is an introduction, just to get started. I'll be back soon with a post on a dedicated topic - maybe plein air painting would be a good start!