Family Values

Zac, 9 x 12 value study, oils, limited palette: burnt sienna, black and white.
one hour.

Zac's Dad, 9 x 12,  value study, oils, limited palette raw umbra, burnt umbra, white.
30 minutes.  

Ten minute warm up times two, 9 x 12, charcoal. Steve (left)) looks like Steve.
I can't seem to get it right with Zac. It might be where he's located? It might be
the nut behind the wheel? The oil study is closer to the truth, but his dropped jaw
is driving me crazy. Kids!

The Sargent painting that sent me for my charcoal pad before seven this morning.
It's called The Piano, 12 x 16, oils. Sargent played the piano or the guitar during
painting breaks. I play the piano and have played classical guitar. I don't think
having those two instruments in common is going to help me follow in his footsteps
as a painter, however. But it was nice to learn I had some things in common with
the maestro. I wonder if he could play the Sonata in G Major, by Beethoven?

Instead of spending my morning coffee on computer, I broke my usual AM pattern with Sargent--for all of five minutes. The book opened to a spectacular painting that was the epitome of thinking in values. Though it had nothing to do with portraiture, it sent me and my coffee down to the studio to do two ten minute value  warm ups. I couldn't wait to get my hands on a piece of charcoal. I had to remember to squint a lot to simplify the subject.(I have to remember to get a better wrinkle cream if I'm going to keep this up). I had to remember to check the axis. My subjects were my son and his son, thus the title of this post.

 My timing was strict. Ten minutes. Hands off. Move on. Ten minutes. Hands off. Move on back upstairs to start the laundry, make Honey his tuna fish for the week and eat breakfast. Then back down for an hour  value study with oils, palette limited to burnt umbra, black and white. (I hate black and white with oils; that's a palette for graphics). The black made burnt umbra and white too cold. For the afternoon, I went to raw umbra just because it was on the palette. I liked it better in my 30 minute sketch of Steve AFTER the laundry was put away. Full day. Easier on the legs though. I cut a carpet section for my easel area. Worked great.

 I'm relatively keeping up the workshop pace using photographs. The nice part of working with photographs is, the models don't charge, they don't move and I can make my value work easier by converting them to black and white or sepia and white.  The bad part about using photographs is the depth of field is shortened considerably. But having worked from life a lot in life, I do know to push the darks and the lights to get added dimension.