Colors on My Palette, Part 2: Painting Dark Skin Tones

"Daniel Jabari", oil on panel, 24" x 24". I wrote about this painting last year on my blog here.  Since that time, the painting was selected as a Semifinalist at the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2016, Smithsonian Institution and was exhibited at the Butler Museum in Ohio.

Talking about it on Facebook led to an artist friend of mine asking me what colors I used to paint DJ's skin color. Since I often introduce new colors or simply switch brands of a color (which can make a big difference sometimes), I try to keep a record of colors on my palette, along with the medium I used, for each painting I do. I talked about this earlier on my blog.

The 'V' next to a color is Vasari; MH is Michael Harding, OH is Old Holland and 'Williams" is Williamsburg. My colors here are: Titanium White,  Brilliant Yellow Light, Rosebud, Nickel Lemon, Yellow Ochre, Vermillion, Capucine Red Light,  Alizarin, Ultramariane,  Dioxazine Mauve, Viridian, Courbet Green, Transparent Oxide Red, Burnt Umber and Ivory Black. (Where is the Ivory black paint smear? I have no idea.)  I also used a Flake White on this painting. The kidney shape to the far right is probably a tea stain.

I based most of the skin tones in this painting on a Capucine Red Light/ Dioxazine Mauve mix. Capucine Red Light is a rich, mid-value opaque red that works well in many face tones. I don't like many of the opaque brick reds that I see, but I do like this one. Like all of the Vasari paints that I've tried, it is fully loaded (i.e., strong tinting strength and highly pigmented). Old Holland is the same way. I don't always use these paints - I like to also include paint brands that are looser and flow easier, such as Gamblin, Rembrandt and Richeson - but this was a rather tightly painted painting with intense colors and these denser brands suited it well.

I approached this figurative painting the same way I approach most, maybe all, of my figurative work; before I start modelling the forms, I decide whether the lit side of the figure will be cool or warm. I often work with cool artificial light or daylight filtered through skylight or window (cool light). This makes the lit side to be the cooler side and the shadow side warmer. These are subtle temperature changes, or at least I try to make them so.

Basically, I'm modelling the forms with warm and cool versions of Capucine Red and Dioxazine Mauve. I'm darkening forms with either another strong color (like Viridian or Ultramarine) or a more neutral paint like Burnt Umber or Black. I saw a lot of wonderful blue/purple and blue/greens in his skin tones. I use orange, but I like to mix my oranges, with various mixes of my reds and yellows.

Does this look alla prima to you? It isn't. I paint most of my work in many layers, so I play around with building up opaque layers, glazing with transparent layers, scumbling cools over warms or vice versa, etc. I love the complexity and depth that comes with working in layers of paint. My goal in this painting was to make the figure seem alive. I don't always go for that effect, but with respect to paintings that are of specific people, that is usually my goal. To me, this means something other than accuracy, it means (among other things) a suggestion of movement and a spatial depth involving texture and impasto. The goal is to include accuracy but to add a certain vivacious aspect which involves judicious paint handling and technique.

You might notice that I lit the figure with a light that is to the east and slightly in front of my subject, which had the effect of lighting up the hands and legs more than if the light were coming from a skylight or overhead light. I liked the drama of this lighting. Besides, I don't like to use the same lighting in all my work.

This painted head is quite small, by the way - 5 inches - I don't much like working this small and whenever I do I vow to never do it again!

"We Are What We Repeatedly Do."

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." - Aristotle.


I've been thinking a lot about habits lately. I just finished reading The Power of Habit  by Charles Duhigg. The book will give you lots of ideas if you want to get rid of bad habits or install some new and better ones. A habit is something that we do over and over again, sometimes without our full realization of it. The important thing to remember is that we get some kind of reward from a particular habit, or else we wouldn't do them. The habit is the trigger that results in a certain behavior that gives us a reward.

Personally, I've always had better luck adding new good habits than attacking my bad habits head-on. Say, for example, you're in the habit of snarfing a bag of caramels when you get home from work, not that I would ever do anything so shameful. If you simply make yourself a mug of virtuous green tea and enjoy that before you attack the caramels, you might forgo the caramels or maybe eat fewer of them. Or then again, you could end up finding yourself with a green-tea-and-bag-of-caramels habit.

Incidentally,the artist Paul Foxton has set up a website, Creative Triggers, which encourages art practice based on cultivating habits. I highly recommend it  if you're trying to squeeze a lot of things into your day and have trouble finding time to teach yourself how to create art.    

Many artists have a series of habits, or procedures, to help them get into (and through) their work day. I don't have a problem getting to the easel, but I sometimes have to settle myself down before I can concentrate, especially if I'm feeling pressured or anxious or I think a painting is starting to fizzle. My studio habits are just simple daily routines that convince my brain that I am in fact going to do something wonderful today; they help me get focused. I'll bet that most artists have some version of what I'm writing about in this post. A lot of people seem to think that artists only work when they are inspired. It's the other way around; I go to work on a regular basis and then the inspiration hits (if I'm lucky).

The first thing I do is change into my standing shoes (thick rubber soled clogs). They make a big difference when you stand for hours at a time; I'm told that surgeons and chefs wear clogs too. You can't really dance in them, though.

Next, I fill up the electric teakettle and make a pot of tea. I try to drink at least half of it during the day and I often drink the whole thing. I'm partial to rustic, earthy teas but I'll try anything once. This Australian tea, Bushells, is nice; so is Billy Tea and Yorkshire Gold.

I put a tea cozy over the pot to keep it warm for hours after you take out the tea leaves. This tea cozy is made out of an old sweater my mother made me when I was little; I took off the sleeves, doubled up the body and put in some fiberfill stuffing to help retain the heat. I've been known to wear this on my head when the temperature drops and I don't want to turn the heat on, but mostly it's a nice daily reminder of my mom.

Putting the paint out on the palette is a thoughtful routine for many artists as they begin their work sessions (see my prior post on my palette). I either keep my paint covered with plastic wrap at the end of the day or put it in the freezer.

Next, I put on an apron; I have at least three of them. I also have a home apron for when I'm done in the studio and need to do things around the house. This helps me change gears psychologically from art-maker to care-giver, which was important when my kids were little and it was critical to be present for them and not brooding about what next to do with my artwork.

Finally, I decide whether to put on some music. I probably get more done with silence, but if the neighbor's dog starts barking endlessly I put something on. I like ambient and classical music and the occasional audiobook.

Colors on my Palette

I don't always use exactly the same colors, for a number of reasons.  For example, I often leave out the pale colors next to the whites because they take up too much room. I was using a more limited palette for a while, but the photo below is what I'm working with right now. Sometimes I'll play with various brands and put new colors in there also (for example, I often use a deeper green than Viridian). These are small blobs of paint in the photo - I'll put on more of some paint than others, depending on what area I'm working on.

From left to right:
Titanium Dioxide
Flake White
Brilliant Yellow Light
Rosebud
Kings Blue Extra Pale Light
Radiant Violet (first time I've used this, not sure I'll keep it)
Yellow Ochre
Genuine Naples Yellow Light (I'm not sure this is made anymore)
Vermillion
Pyrrolo Red
Dioxazine Purple
Cobalt Blue
Ultramarine Blue Deep
Viridian
Green-Gold ( sort of a Cinnabar Green)
Capucine Red Light
Transparent Oxide Red
Ivory Black

The palette itself doesn't usually look quite this bad. I need to sand it down and re-finish it. It's a hand-held palette but I frequently clamp it to things when I'm working so I don't have to hold it the whole time. A few years ago I woke up one morning and couldn't lift my arm up higher than my shoulder - my arm was frozen in the holding-a-palette-position, which was fine if you're a painter or if you don't need to hail taxis very often, but embarrassing since I needed help getting dressed or, say, brushing my hair. Physical therapy fixes this issue, by the way, but much better to prevent these sorts of problems in the first place.

And here's a photo of the brands I'm using at the moment:

The white is an alkyd white (I don't know why the flake white isn't up there on the table, sorry about that. I'm not seeing the purple either). I was having some problems with the flake white on my current painting since it wasn't drying fast enough for my taste so I'm using more titanium in the flesh than I usually do. I work in layers without a grisalle underpainting, so I don't know how I would describe my style of painting, not quite alla prima but not classical technique, either.

I'm also oiling out with the Gamblin solvent free gel - this is the first time I'm using it and I like it a lot. I've got a self-tubed tube of Oleogel also (if you're self-tubing, try to find the tubes with big black caps, don't buy the tubes with white caps like I have shown here). My brushes are piled up in the middle - maybe I'll do a post later on my favorite brushes.

A Limbo Room for Artwork

Do you ever wonder where your paintings go when you are stumped about what to do next with them and they're not quite ready for exhibition or sale? They sneak out of your room at night and start living under the radar in my Limbo Room.

You'll never guess what I found Googling for "Limbo", a painting by a follower of my old friend, Hieronymous Bosch :

"Christ in Limbo" by Follower of Hieronymous Bosch, image taken from this Wikipedia source.

"Limbo" is a term used in the Roman Catholic Church for a place where one's soul goes if it isn't quite qualified for Heaven but isn't quite disqualified, either. You'll need to search around the internet for more information on the Church's position since frankly, I don't know it, and besides, I've already been told that my posts are too long and boring and all artists actually want to know is this: how did you mix that color? closely followed by the question,  how can I get into a good gallery?

By the way, getting into a good gallery is not actually the equivalent of your painting getting into Heaven. Getting your painting sold is the equivalent of getting your painting into Heaven.

Anyway, so there's your painting with something that makes it not quite ready for sale. Take a good hard look at your work in Limbo for a minute. What, in general, is going wrong there? Is the drawing off, the color garish, are there hopeless technical issues, is the concept too boring, or is the design weak or uninteresting? A lot of my own problem paintings are the result of insufficient planning before I start working on a painting. Sometimes parts of a painting can be salvaged, a portion isolated and restretched and saved.

 If you're a professional artist, you have to keep up your quality in a competitive economy, but you cannot afford to have too many paintings end up in Limbo. You'll run out of room, for one thing, and you'll go broke.

I was going to include a photo of my Limbo area but I've decided not to, it's too embarrassing. Meanwhile, I go into Limbo every few months and throw my weight around, throwing out hopeless paintings by pushing them into a funnel and making them swim in a foul black liquid (see above). It's a bad feeling to do that, especially if you've worked a long time on a piece, but it's necessary.

You might enjoy the version of Limbo Rock below, with a still-spry 72-yr. old Chubby Checker. (I couldn't find a decent video of him performing this song from the 60s.) You could play it as upbeat background music while you go and throw out a few paintings.

A Project Board for Your Studio

Hope you can read the little signs above, it's a section of my Project Board. You're supposed to read the captions from left to right and then drop down a line, that's the sequencing of any given project, reading like a cartoon strip.

An artist is a business owner in the business of making some art. Unless you have a dedicated team or devoted supporters, you'll have to be the one to manage your paperwork and business matters. Things can easily get out of hand and you can quickly be swamped and disorganized, or you can do forgetful things like send out a painting before you photograph it. Worse, good ideas can get lost or forgotten.

Never lose track of the financial aspects of these things, you won't keep working full-time in the art world for very long if you do.

I'm a portrait painter as well as a gallery painter and teacher, so at times there are a lot of my different projects all up in the air at once, in various stages of completion. I can forget where I am with any given matter when things get really busy. I have a family that I'm supposed to keep track of, too, so believe me when I say that this project board has really helped me. This project board is a big bulletin board where I can see everything I'm supposed to be doing with my art life at a glance.

Right next to this block of little notes is another block for 'Portrait Projects' so there is a parallel universe taking place there, too. The portrait project board is a little more complicated because there are phone calls, sittings, etc.

On top of the two project boards, along the top of the board, I have a chronological chart with dates, showing the deadlines, guidelines and rules for shows I'm supposed to be in and contests I might want to enter. I also pin up flight information for shows I want to fly out to, or for portrait sittings.

When I write this all out sitting here at 5:00 am it sounds like my life is wildly exciting, doesn't it? That's pretty funny.

So let's say I have an idea about a painting... I give it a working title (or maybe I'll just describe the visual ) and pin it under the "concept" tag.

Projects move from left to right, so from here things go to "sketches, references, sizing" (where I will sketch out my idea, or maybe I might already have a sketch of that idea, it depends) and on down through the categories. Sometimes (that is to say, pretty often) ideas get stalled,  thrown out or derailed altogether. Projects can get stuck here for a long, long time. They also can get stuck in the "Work On Painting" slot.

See the label up there in the top photo titled "Upload Image to Artwork Archive"? I mentioned Artwork Archive a few months ago; it's a great way to check up on prices, sizes of paintings and where your painting is currently located. Don't laugh, if you do this for a long time, you'll need a system.

When my project board system is working properly, my dedicated production staff coordinates seamlessly with the Varnishing Department, the Photography Unit and the Shipping Division, all the way up to the asleep-at-the-switch Marketing Department, so that there is supposed to be a steady flow of paintings from mind to market, so to speak.

Keeping a Still Life Alive - "Gardenia on Her Side"

This is a small tip for you, but it might help. When painting flowers or vegetation, consider tubing up the flower to keep it blooming for an extra day or so. This is especially important if you have a flower sitting on a shelf or otherwise in limbo. Otherwise, you'll watch it die of thirst before your very eyes, often in a matter of hours, especially in the case of a fragile flower like the gardenia, above. It doesn't last very long even in the best of circumstances, though. You can get these tubes at any florists shop, I think.

"Gardenia on Her Side", oil, 6" x 18"


I had a couple of tubes on this painting above and took them off to paint the stems when the rest of the branches were fairly dead. Every so often these gardenias defeat me, though, and I have to finish the paintings off via photos. I had to do the petals on the white flower that way; I can usually replace the flower with others from my gardenia bush, but I was flat out of flowers for a while and was strapped. For about a month, my flowers on my gardenia bush either browned within minutes after picking or fell off before blooming.

The thing I like about working this way, though, is that there was never a moment when the scene in front of me looked exactly like this, using these exact plants. It's a kind of analog - it shares motifs with other similar plants, but never quite looks like what was there at any given point. It's a synthesis of similar stems and flowers at different time periods on my shelf in front of me. Maybe it's a distillation, a condensation, of gardenia-ish-ness.

This painting is on it's way up to Abend Gallery for the 2013 Holiday Miniatures Show.

Alumalite Panels, Option One: Preparing with Gesso and Acrylic

Quality Control Inspector, Alumalite Panel Production Unit (Gesso Division, Desert Sector) of Linda Tracey Brandon, PC, LLC, PLC.

I just completed my second large painting on an Alumalite panel and since I'm starting my third one, I thought I'd share my process of making them, using gesso and acrylic paint. You can always mount linen to Alumalite instead; I'll post later on about how to affix linen.

Alumalite is a product (like Dibond) in which two thin sheets of aluminum are bonded to a plastic core. Both are proprietary names and there are other brands and variations of this (such as Econolite, etc.) Dibond is sturdier, somewhat heavier and somewhat more expensive. Alumalite has a corregated plastic core and comes in various thickness. The sheets I order come in 4' x 8' sizes which I don't cut myself. Alumalite is just like its name, liteweight and can be dented, so watch out. It's not as fragile as something like foamcore but you can still damage it if you kneel on it or bash something against it. It's also hard to cut (so I'm told) so either find yourself somebody who can handle this for you (for all I know, that could be you, showoff) or ask the company that supplies it for you to make the cuts while you are also asking them to deliver it to you. Also, ask them to have their resident finicky neurosurgeon make the cuts so nobody will scratch it or make gouges in it. Don't make a huge order with anybody until you determine they are fussy enough for your taste.

Alumalite is very firm and will not flex, at least in the thickness I've been using, 1/4" (you can get other thicknesses). You won't need to brace it when you frame it. I haven't gone whole-hog and made the 4' x 8' size for a painting, though, so if you do that let me know if it will need bracing.

Alumalite comes with both sides coated with vinyl for delivery purposes. Remove the vinyl by stripping it off, that's pretty obvious.

Rough up the business side of the panel gently with sandpaper. Carefully sand any rough or sharp cut edges of  your panel. You probably don't need a power sander, just use sandpaper and a sanding block. I wipe off the panel afterward with an old wet towel.

Apply the gesso. I use Daniel Smith's stone gray acrylic gesso.

It's nice gesso, but I hate gesso. It's awful stuff, a hostile alien life form which wants to invade every orifice. If you drip it anywhere it will dry almost instantly, especially if you live in a desert environment, ruining everything since it will never wash out....! Wear plastic gloves, headgear, eye, mouth and ear protection too, if you have it!

Don't answer phone texts while working with gesso!

If possible, have one of your many lower-tier employees apply the gesso.

These big sponge brushes are fine for this part of it but they are badly made and always fall apart in the middle of a big job. Let this dry overnight, sand lightly the next day, wipe down with another old towel and repeat.

Man up, artist, because you are going to do the whole thing again but this time, you're going to apply coats of Golden's white acrylic paint. I decided to thin this a little with water and apply with a foam roller. I guess I could have used the foam roller with the gesso coats also, I just don't like to thin down the gesso very much, but you could do it. I'll probably skip the sponge with the gesso and just roll with the roller next time, it's just that my gesso dries so fast I wasn't sure I could do the whole panel, and I thought I might get a soft light spraying of gesso spatter on every possible surface, including me. I bought a super-soft roller so the coat was even with few ridges. After the coat with the foam roller, I sanded again very lightly by hand.

I wrapped up the foam roller in case I wanted to use it again for the next coat... but...

...I ended up using little makeup sponges for the last, final coat.  I wet the sponge with a little bit of water and it goes on nicely, but the sponges end up feeling like wet marshmallows, disintegrate  with use and need to be replaced often, so you'll go through several of them.

By this time your hourly employees have gone on strike and you're having to cross picket lines of angry masked protesters screaming and wielding broken beer bottles, nervously held back by riot police. So, by now you are doing it all by yourself. You should send this whole operation offshore! All this, for one lousy panel! You'll feel like drowning your sorrows with this sponge water by the time it's over, but don't do it.

The final thing to do is a light wet sanding. I used a block wrapped in wet/dry sandpaper for this.

My gesso/acrylic preparation process is basically what David Kassan does with his aluminum panels, unless he's changed his process. The Stone/Gluck team over on Painting Stuff to Look Like Stuff are also painting on aluminum substrates and have recently described their process as well - both links are on the right side of this page, be sure to click over there on both sites for more info.

Gluing Linen to Panels

Sometimes I paint on linen taped to boards. I often do this when I'm sketching or going to an open studio where I might not want to spend my time and money stretching linen or using a good panel in case my work ends up being something I might not want to save. You could tape your linen to foamcore to lighten the weight of panels when you head out to paint the landscape (thank you, Alex Tyng).

Another reason to do alla prima work on a taped-down piece of linen is that I don't always get the composition exactly the way I want it. For example, if I'm painting a profile, I'll want to put the head on the canvas so that there is plenty of "looking space" in the direction where the sitter is looking. It's annoying to be two hours into a portrait head study and find out you should have moved the head an inch or so to the right. This kind of thing drives me crazy. I hate not getting the design right on the canvas! I often start the whole thing over if that happens.

So, let's say you have a painting on a piece of linen and you want to glue it to a panel. Measure out the dimensions on the linen and then cut around the piece - give yourself an inch or so for the final cut, don't cut the piece exactly to the size of the board and then try to glue it down so the edges match, it will drive you insane.

 Piece of masonite (I think this might be Ampersand board) on the left, linen on the right, on top of a scrap board so I don't carve into my nice table.

I put matte acrylic medium on a sponge and I wipe it on both the board and the back of the linen. Then I put the jelly side of the board to the jelly side of the linen. I push down with my hands and then I flip the jelly sandwich over.

My skull is stolen from the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. Not to be confused with the novel (and movie) The Lord of the Rings  by J. R. Tolkien, which is another thing entirely. This is not my own skull, either, I have more of an overbite.

I flip the painting over and put tissue paper on top of the paint. Then I roll the painting with a rubber brayer, being careful around any impasto areas. 

Then I flip the whole thing over again and put heavy books on top to weigh it all down overnight, so it's a little like salt-and-dill-cured gravlax, if you've ever made that. I always hope that some osmosis will take place and some art wisdom will seep down into my paintings. As you can see below, in this case I had a book about Sorolla and one by Vincent Desiderio. I recommend both of these books to read, not just for pressing.

Let your sandwich dry overnight and then you're ready for the final trim with a sharp x-acto blade. Be careful! 

Sometimes I wrap these boards like tidy packages, with neat little hospital corners, but it's much more sticky and fiddly. If you have had the foresight to see if the board fits into your frame properly, you may need to add the tiny bit of fabric afforded by the fold. Framemakers are maddeningly non-uniform in their ideas of what constitutes a proper size frame for, say, a 20 x 16 painting, one of my favorite sizes. One of the bad things that can happen is that the whole belabored board and linen sandwich is too big for your too-tight frame, and like Cinderella's evil stepsisters on confronting that ridiculous glass Barbie shoe, you'll be forced to make a Solomonic judgment on what to do about it.

A Kickstarter Project: The Miira View Frame

I love the idea of a couple of determined artists getting together to create a product that is useful to artists and will create work for local people. If you haven't used Kickstarter before, I recommend you take a look to see all the dreams that are out there and see if you can do something to help projects you can wrap your head around.

I don't know these artists, but I think their idea - a plastic viewfinder with magnetic grids - would be an extremely useful tool. I would like to think that somewhere a covey of earnest, thoughtful children will be finding angles with magnets and squinting down.

This company is also developing an iphone app that does the same thing. I will probably get one of these too but I think it is a good idea to put the plastic grids into production. I think I'd rather use the plastic grid during the course of planning a painting.

A lot of artists begin their paintings by developing some kind of compositional gridding system to help them plan the design of the picture plane, in addition to a means to find angles, copy subjects to scale or drawings scaled up to transfer to the canvas. That's the subject of a later post, I guess.

If you think of Oklahoma as a vague fly-over state, it's a state filled with very nice people who have to put up with tornadoes, weather extremes and people bursting into that song "Ohhhk-lahoma" who only know the first line of the song.

Here's the video for the Miira View Frame (their website is here) - please fund this because I would really like to own one of these!

Clamps and Palettes

There's so much good technical information about oil painting on the internet right now that it's hard to come up with new or useful ideas to share with other artists, but I'll share a few things I do just in case it's new to anybody and might help. Also, I have stolen ideas from a lot of other artists, so apologies if I have stolen an idea from you and forget to credit you and besides, you probably stole it yourself from somebody, didn't you?

 I should clean this palette up a little before I post it, but here you have it as I used it yesterday. Usually I have a primitive painting string set up, with three to five values of a color per blob, so this palette is exceptionally messy, even for me.

Frequently I like to move a palette to the painting while I work on small passages, taking the mountain to Mohammed, so to speak. Clamping the palette to the easel works well for me. Here I'm using a double-hinged Manfrotto clamp, available at friendly internet mega photo stores everywhere.

You can also do this with a larger palette but you'll probably need a couple of clamps. The big benefit to this method is that you have your palette and your painting in the same light. It also helps the mind skip easily from the painting to the palette when you're trying to manage subtle passages in modelling, for example, and keeps the mind from skipping to other thoughts, such as, "peanut butter again for lunch?" . My paints are not usually very runny but if they are, you can put a piece of duct tape along the bottom ridge of the palette to keep paint from sliding onto your shoes or your floor. (Speaking of floors, I paint while standing on a rubber mat. It makes a big difference to do that when you are standing for several hours.)

(As while as I'm digressing, I might as well mention that I have a cuckoo clock that goes off, as they tend to do, every hour. This signals me that I should walk around, have some water, do some pushups, check Facebook - just kidding, don't check Facebook! -  use that noise as a signal to get away from your painting for a little bit and look at it afresh. If you're going down the wrong path it's better to know sooner rather than later. If you don't have a cuckoo clock, use a timer. I don't have a real cuckoo clock, it's a little plastic clock where a car comes out of a tunnel and beeps. I use timers for a lot of things since I tend to get too focused on working and then I forget to do all the other things I'm supposed to do.)

Clamping your palette keeps your left hand free-ish (I'm right handed so I have a brush in my right hand). I have a glove on my left hand and it's usually holding a scrap of towelling. I still bump into my palette when I lean over it to noodle around on the painting, but I'm getting better at this.

The shiny glob on the palette is Oleogel, a terrific medium by Natural Pigments and discussed at length by the wonderful Kate Stone at Painting Stuff to Look Like Stuff. I buy mine in a can and then tube it, it's cheaper that way. One of the good things about Oleogel is that it won't run down a tilted palette and stays happily in its glob shape until you need it.

Studio Mannequins

Every so often when I'm online I see wonderful old art studio mannequins. Here are three from an internet website for antiques and collectibles, www.susanwalter.com:

I don't own these, but I have two serviceable ones - Nelson and Caspar. Nelson's primary charm is that I made him myself.

Nelson is splint into two entities, Full Nelson and Half Nelson. I just have Half  Nelson set up at the moment, but you'll get the drift here:

Half Nelson is a pair of long underwear bottoms stuffed with old T-shirts. He's further supported by dowels to help him sit up straighter. He's what I use when I want to paint clothing like skirts or pants from life and the model or client has left for the day. Full Nelson is more of the same, wherein I stuff the top part of the long underwear with rags and dowels, bending the elbows as need be.

The benefit of these mannequins is that they are cheap to make and if you have a sudden reversal of fortune, you'll have a bonanza of old t-shirts to pull out and wear. There are lots of internet sites that show you how to cut up and rip t-shirts so they look more fashionable, too, though I'm not sure I personally could pull this off with panache.

Here's Caspar, my other (somewhat) posable mannequin. When I bought her she was one of the few affordable ones I could find, but a quick Google search has revealed a lot more of them out there now, with heads and more realism. Still, she does the job and hangs from a metal loop to give her some extra height. A pity that she can't sit. Caspar is dressed for my latest large painting which is nearly done.

Varnishes

Despite what you're thinking, I don't just go swanning around at art parties and museums, I work like a dog at my studio and I have lots of opinions on art materials.

I use two brands of varnish for my paintings, in addition to the occasional use of retouch. The first is GamVar, a very fine product made by Gamblin. The package that I have comes with two glass jars. The first has varnish crystals and the second jar has liquid that dissolves and suspends the varnish crystals into a usable liquid varnish. The two jar method keeps the product fresher, in theory. I just went on the Gamblin site and it seems that GamVar is now being sold in bottles, so it looks like you might as well just get the single bottle after all and forget the mixing and shaking.

GamVar is glossy, but you can reduce the gloss by mixing it with Gamblin's Cold Wax medium. You can also make the varnish completely matte by applying the Cold Wax Medium and buffing your painting. I've done this and it works well also, especially on panels.

The company is well known for providing lots of good product information to artists and this is the link to its discussion of varnishes.

The varnish I've been using most recently is 'UVS Matte Varnish'  made by Conservator's Products, available at this link. I like the matte quality of this varnish on my paintings. It comes with a little plastic bottle of UVA product and you add a drop or two according to directions as you mix up your varnish. The nice people at the company answer the phone if you have questions about anything, too, or if you have managed to lose the top of your squeeze bottle or tipped it over. The reason there's a rubber band around the can is because I attach the varnish directions to the can that way (it's a separate piece of paper).

The best way to apply your varnish is to pour it into some kind of china or porcelain saucer ( that's what I use) and use a little triangular soft white makeup sponge, available at your local pharmacy or megastore. These are perfect for putting on the right amount of varnish and you can also use them for applying powered charcoal or graphite or other dry media when you draw. They create a satisfying blockiness and mass when you draw this way and you can use the side or the edge of the sponge. Dual thank yous for this tip, the awesome artists, Sadie Valeri and  Kate Stone.

Solvent Free

[EDIT: the dishwashing detergent shown in the photo was fine for the synthetic brushes I've been using lately but not the best thing for sables, badgers, natural bristles, etc. - see the comments to this post for other recommendations. There's a lot of bar soaps and other products out there for oil paints that are kinder on brushes.]

The condition of being "Solvent Free" is not to be confused with the rarer condition of "Solvency", which is another thing entirely, especially in the representational art community.

Going solvent free means getting rid of the solvents in your oil painting working methods. Common paint solvents such as odorless mineral spirits (OMS), turpentine, etc. can be dangerous to your health, especially when you work with it every day in close non-ventilated quarters. Several of my artist friends have also developed allergies to the stuff.

A few months ago I was at an open studio and watched a young man paint a portrait using a jar of walnut oil to clean his brushes instead of OMS. His work looked fantastic - lush paint, expressive strokes, fresh and clean. I went back to my studio and decided to research this. Apparently you can use either safflower oil or walnut oil to clean your brushes - don't use linseed oil because of its flash point. Linseed oil soaked rags are a cause of fires since they can accidentally spontaneously combust. Don't leave oil soaked rags sitting around, dispose of them right away.

Watch this, artists!

Did you know that human beings can spontaneously combust, by the way?

A half hour after I finished writing the above, but before I posted this, I read a story about human spontaneous combustion in the Sept. 7-8 weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. Apparently,  a case of spontaneous combustion took place in Oklahoma in February of this year, so it's nothing to joke about or to sneeze at.  Naturally, being the alarmist that I am, I researched this a little further. One theory postulates that energy patterns, the Kundalini, that run up and down your spine become misaligned, triggering a temperature spike and you ignite. ( I'm not so sure about this theory.) Another theory is that there are energy anomalies in the earth itself, since suspected cases of human spontaneous combustion are geographically clustered. Hmm. The real estate agents never tell you that, do they?

Back to our story. I wanted to try painting without solvents because I was travelling to a far away land with zero hope of getting solvents when I landed there.Meanwhile, I really like the way my paintings are turning out using safflower oil and dishwashing detergent as brush cleaners. I use small amounts of Oleogel as my medium lately, but I also use other products as mediums. The brushes are incredibly supple and responsive to varying degrees of pressure. I wipe off as much safflower oil as I can  before reusing the brush in another color and it usually works, but if I'm going from dark colors to light I change brushes. At the end of the day I wash them in the soap and shape them.

Many thanks to the marvelous Master of Maastricht, Scott Bartner for his encouragement to pursue anti-solventation, though he has much more to say about this subject than I've covered here.

Inventory Software for Artists

If you're a full time artist (and don't have a diligent assistant/spouse/significant other who keeps track of these things), chances are you can quickly lose track of matters like where your paintings are, how you titled them, what size they are, how you framed them and when you varnished them. You can also lose track of where photos of your artwork are stored (this is particularly applicable to those of us who started our careers in the pre-digital photo age).

There are many systems for cataloging your work, but the one that I'm using now and like very much is Artwork Archive. It's simple to use and has a couple of options in terms of fees and number of images you can post. I feel extremely organized having this cataloging system.

Summer Camp at Chez Brandon

Where I live, there's been one ominous dust storm after the other. It's best to be inside your house when they happen, or at least not driving or walking or riding your bike, which is of course not always avoidable. One of these days I'll paint a dust storm. I'll be like Turner, riding on the outside of the stagecoach in the midst of a galestorm, face fiercely bared to the elements, to feel what it's like to be in a gale. On second thought, maybe I won't be like Turner. It depends on the dust storm, I guess.

One thing for sure: even if you are inside, a dust storm is bad for oil paintings with sticky mediums, dark backgrounds and murderously particuloid on varnish days. I have a nice place to paint in, but the least bit of dust swirls around and gloms itself to my paintings. An artist friend advised me to "tent my paintings". I don't think she actually meant "go out and buy a little tent and set it up and put your paintings in it", but that is what I did after I visited a local big box store and children's tents were on clearance for fourteen dollars. I have this set up in a bathroom but you could also put one in a garage. If I had an attic or basement, I would set it up there.

Actually, you could also just set up a sheet over a table and set your paintings under there.

Before I had this tent, I put my paintings in a narrow closet and closed the sliding door, but the closets are carpeted and I'm convinced they shed microscopic particles of alien fuzz.

"Rachel in my Studio"

30" x 24", oil. Available for purchase at Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA.

This antique low-backed portrait chair shows up in a lot of my paintings, only this time I've covered it up with a draped cloth. I'm happy that I finally figured out how to adjust my skylights so that I get nice dramatic light that is a little diffused and not blasting like a laser beam (I live in Arizona! hey, we have sunlight here). When I do this again I'm going to push the podium back a few more inches. The trick is to set the easel up so that I can see the subject and what's on my easel at the same time while being able to back up several feet, not always easy to do, depending on the room. My subject is a wonderfully talented young woman, so beautiful and great fun to paint.

William Whitaker Signature Brushes From Trekell

I'm excited to see that Trekell (http://www.trekell.com/) has added a new line of high quality brushes as 'William Whitaker Signature Brushes'. Mr. Whitaker (http://www.williamwhitaker.com/) has been my teacher and is a true master, as well as being a terrific human being. His finely detailed paintings are beautifully crafted. We can't attribute this all to the brushes, but they look good, don't they? Anyway,I plan to order some of these as soon as I can.

Here's the link: http://www.trekell.com/William-Whitaker-Signature-Brushes_c_91.html

'Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it' - Leonardo da Vinci

I had a nice discussion with an artist last week about painting portrait head studies. She felt she was pretty accurate with still life paintings, but when it came down to painting heads in a tight time frame (two or three hours is a tight time frame) she didn't do as well.

My off the cuff advice was to continue doing the still life studies, but what I should have advised her to do was to get one of these planes of the head casts. Many years ago I studied with a woman who made us do a charcoal drawing of this cast before every portrait painting. That practice really helped me understand the shapes and relative values of what is going on with a head as the different planes turn away from the light source. Naturally, this head is a prototype, not an actual individualized head and so all results will vary. But it will help you form a set of presumptions in your brain - not assumptions, presumptions -to look for when painting from life. (In other words, you can presume there is an indentation below the lower lip - but it's not always there in every subject. And if it isn't there, you might decide that this characteristic is something that you might want to pay special attention to.) It helps you to see the sculptural forms as you paint and (important when there is a timer ticking) with practice can help you make judgements a little more quickly.

This is a cast designed by John Asaro many years ago. My own cast is an plaster one (notice the cracked base, glued together when it fell out of my car. Rats.) The newer ones are plastic (gray plastic, I believe) and are more durable; they are available here: http://www.planesofthehead.com/index.php I've also seen a variety of good planes casts on the internet.

Using Binoculars

I've been using these for a few months now and I think they are a terrific tool for anybody who wants to improve their work from life. I am of course indebted to the indefatigable David Kassan for this suggestion (http://www.davidkassan.com/).

I know what you're thinking... this is just a tool to render the life out of things, and who needs all that detail? But hear me out:

1. These aren't just any binoculars, these are the Pentax 0.5m Papilo 6.5 x 21, 'extremely close focusing' 0.5m/1.6ft binos. In other words, you don't have to be standing too far away to use them, as you would with other binos. They are good for a situation where a model is on the other side of the room from you, for example, or where it's awkward to walk up and get a closer look at what you're doing.

2. You don't use them for designing a painting, or planning the concept, or squinting for shadows, or even necessarily for detail. You use them to establish accuracy of placement. I find them especially useful to help me with any spatial confusion I might have on an object. In other words, if I can't really see what is in front of something else, I might be tempted to treat the whole area as one unit. This is fine if that is what you want in your painting, but if you want to add detail, or sharpen an edge, etc. for any aesthetic purpose, it is nice to see what you're doing and make an informed decision. It's a decision making tool, basically.

3. The binos help you focus your mind on the area you're painting. This last point surprised me, frankly. I suppose it's a little like putting blinders on a horse - you're not distracted by the nonsense going on next to you, or what else might be rumbling around in your mind at the moment. You're focused on getting one particular area correct - that's it.

Drawbacks in using these include arm strain from holding them up to your eyes, and the sheer goofiness of how they look when you put them on top of your other glasses.

Oil Sketch on Frosted Mylar

Frosted Mylar is an affordable and archieval support if you plan on painting lots of figurative work from life. If you're generally new to doing this kind of life work and don't want to waste a lot of expensive linen during your first sessions, try the frosted Mylar. It's good for open studio sketches and for making preliminary sketches for paintings on more traditional supports. In my case, I was trying out a new pair of binoculars in an open studio situation and I wasn't sure if I would be able to find the right place to set up. (I'm going to blog about binoculars later.)The Mylar comes in a big sheet which costs around $5.00 (the portion shown is a quarter sheet). It's opaque and semi-absorbent - actually, it's a little hard to describe, but the strokes show up well and I especially like the way transparent paint reacts to it. I've taped the sheet onto a board to do the actual painting. I've been wondering how I'd frame this piece - I think I would glue the edges of the Mylar to a white gessoed board of the same size and then put the piece under glass (with a spacer between the glass and the Mylar). Everything I've read about Mylar indicates it's archieval but I might still be inclined to put it under glass and treat it as I would a drawing.The open studio session was three hours, but I wiped off my first head and started a new, smaller version, so this one is at about an hour and a half of painting. My wonderful teacher William Whitaker (http://www.williamwhitaker.com/) showed his students how to use Mylar a few years ago and since then I've seen other artists using it as well.