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.