Walter

Walter

I am enjoying painting Walter’s portrait. It has come along nicely since I started to go over all the oil on canvas portraits using tones of brown ochre and using hints of Venetian red rather than the more orangey light red. 

It won’t be long before I have to paint in his moustache. That will be an interesting challenge.

His clothes are complicated too.

I am continuing to have ten portraits on the go, all sitting on picture shelves. I have two new ones ready to start as soon as I have space to put them. 

I mentioned last week that I had been very interested in the Civilisations episode about religious painting. 

I am a Nichiren Buddhist. Nichiren Daishonin inscribed a scroll with calligraphy of which he wrote: "I, Nichiren, have inscribed my life in sumi ink”. We Nichiren Buddhists enshrine a copy of this scroll in our homes and don’t generally go in for images of Buddhas. 

In another letter, Nichiren Daishonin wrote that he was ”cursed with an ugly appearance”. He had a couple of portraits painted during his lifetime that show he was not a handsome man but they do portray a kind man. 

After his death, statues were erected, and each one is more beautified than the last. 

I have noticed that beautification is common when it comes to painting religious figures.

Baby Has Eyes

Baby Has Eyes

I have been working hard painting this week. I spend about an hour on each portrait then I put them on the shelf to dry. 

I have changed my favourite brand of paint to Talens Rembrandt oil colours. I bought a selection of them and discovered that a very good cool skin tone is brown ochre mixed with lots of white, and a touch of light red oxide for rosy cheeks. My original selection didn’t include raw umber, so I ordered that, and some transparent oxide brown to try out.

Once I had the raw umber I was able to paint the baby’s eyes. They are a hazel brown and the rest of my browns were reddish. No good at all!

His eyes aren’t quite in the right place because I couldn’t rest my hand on the painting to do them - the paint was wet.

I would get more done (maybe) if I didn’t spend a lot of time picking tiny cat hairs out of the paint. I have tried tweezers but I can’t find any precise enough. I sometimes manage to scrape them off with a small palette knife if I find them before they are embedded in the paint.

Does anyone know a good solution? 

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Lack of Work in Progress

Lack of Work in Progress

I have made progress. Really! But I am expecting visitors and I have been painting ceilings and woodwork when I would rather have been painting this beautiful rosy-cheeked baby boy.

Yesterday I worked on his forehead, outlined his eyes and got his ear nicely established.

I have discovered that ”brown ochre” in Talens Rembrandt oil paints makes a perfect soft rosy colour when mixed with lots of white. I am adding a hint of light oxide red in the rosiest areas. I know I need to blend the cheeks and chin! 

Today was boring. I was back to washing floors and tidying up to get ready for my visitors. But I achieved one useful thing. I had downloaded an iPad app that was supposed to scan photos nicely. I wasn’t happy with it because I discovered that it depended on a subscription service. I have trouble with that kind of thing. I get a long time lag for anything cloud-based. I am not talking about just minutes. I deleted it.

So I searched for another photo scanner iPad/iPhone app and found one that I could test for free. It worked well (see above) so I paid for the unlimited scans version. It is called Unfade. It finds the edges of the painting and squares it up so I can take a quick photo. The full version repairs faded photos which is how it gets its name, but I don’t need that.