Exercise 6 Creating mood and atmosphere

Initially I thought about trying to use non realistic colours and painting style similar to German Expressionists such as Paula Modersohn-Becker's 'Lee Hoetger and her sister', but somehow I couldn't settle on this. My subconscious wanted a little more realism.  I tried a couple of colour studies of my model thinking that the mood I would like to create was one of calm relaxation. I began with various mixes of blues, greens and purples on a white ground. Somehow my study came out rather more realistic than I first intended and seemed to be constantly fighting against too much simplification.  The method of using blocky paint application didn't seem to tie in with an air of calmness. Should I change the intended outcome to a different or the brushwork or the colours? Should I go more in the direction of Picasso's blue paintings or even Rembrandt? By this stage the sitter had only a certain amount of time so I decided to stick to blues and purples while trying to create an air of quiet introspection. I tried another colour study on a dark ground first. Both versions had their advantages; the white ground it would be easier to retain the lightest lights where the ground is left unpainted creating a vibrant glow. The dark ground it would be easier to retain the darks  ie. the nostril and pupils of the eyes, although I had to re-assert these when they became partly obliterated by lighter paint, due to the awkwardness of the small scale. I think the dark ground would fit the relaxed mood better if I blend the brushmarks more in my next attempt.
At one point during the process of the final painting I became conscoious that I might be finally discovering how to better control the brush. I was now using a wider flat (size 6) in quite small areas, like the eye sockets, with confidence. Also holding it further away from the tip - similar to a knife when spreading butter both hard and soft, I seemed to have improved flexibility in my wrist. It didn't solve the need to use a tiny brush for the finer details of the eyes - but you can't have everything. I scraped back some areas with a plastic card to obtain variation in surface texture and scratched out certain other areas, but these aren't so visible, except to expose some of the raw canvas..
The highlights gradually became so light that I was eventually using the odd touch of pure white in the end.

colour study 1

Finally, the face looks a bit overworked in relation to the top, which I think looks more painterly. On seeing John Minton's  self portrait (Research Point 1) it makes me feel a little better in this regard.

colour study 2

The eyelids appear to be covered in a veil of mist, due to my laboured attempts to add convincing highlights, but they repeatedly slipped into undesired areas, so I reinstated the eyelid creases. This was a very delicate operation which I struggled with repeatedly. I wanted to try a variety of techniques in one painting: 1. all prima - didn't really work as I had to leave the part completed painting and return three or four times over the course of a few days, because my energy levels were very low, due to a heavy cold. As a consequence some paint was  tacky when I painted over it - not ideal. 2. scraping back some still wet areas with a knife or plastic card. I was fairly pleased with the effect as it revealed parts of the mid tone ground  - a thick and thin effect, although the result is only subtle. All the while I subconsciously wanted to achieve a likeness of the sitter, so I found it necessary to fiddle around with the shadow and tonal variations, to try and balance them. It seemed to take forever...

early stages of painting -
the basic tones mapped in

completed painting - this is not a good re-production

Thoughts on the completed painting: The paint in parts does appear to have some expressiveness. It is definitely evocative of a particular mood. Some of the brushmarks on the shirt,  a certain liveliness. On the forehead the wrinkles, along with the faraway look in the eyes, contribute to a tinge of  anxiety   in the sitter's expression, adding a certain edginess to the otherwise calm atmosphere. Aswell as this, the eyes looking away gives the sitter a look of moody  introspection and and mysterious air to the whole. The glow emitted from the light source, onto the face tends to give him an angelic look in a strange way.  The mood is also one of calmness, created mostly I think, by the blues and mauves and the blended brushwork. Both the sitter and  I think it is a good  likeness, fairly realistic, yet a little unusual because of the unrealistic flesh tones. 

Completed painting after alterations

On the initial version there are small rivers of canvas showing through in places. This is because I  had scraped back some of the paint to give a look of unevenness. I don't think, looking at it again, that this effect does anything positive for the painting; the paint looks too sparse and I'm not keen on the appearance of canvas showing through so much now; my tutor didn't criticize this apart from the lower right of the face. Upon revisiting, following certain suggestions she made I worked over this area gently but found it looked thicker and more intense alongside the other areas; they looked faded and hazy in comparison. Despite my attempts to blend and soften it, the lower right side of the face still has a rivulet like appearance,  but this was what I saw.  I started to find fault with many other areas of the face and hair which led me on to continue adding alterations. I also tried to quieten down the background by blending the paint more. Doing this and adding another layer using slightly darker tones than the previous layer, I think it has also had the effect of bringing the face into dramatic focus, reminiscent of chiaroscuro.

this study was considered as possible
 alternative option.

I didn't try to disguise the beard and facial hair, but rather tried to soften its appearance. I think it does mostly softer in spite of a dark shadow  on the right, contrasting quite strongly with the light grey beard. This shadow is what I could see so I didn't try to tone it down. In the end it is pretty evident that virtually the whole painting has undergone an alteration/addition of some sort, even so I am quite confident that this has been to its advantage.

Assignment 1: Still Life

The options available here were to choose one from a range of areas such as landscape, interiors, still life etc. and to paint it in a representational rather than abstract way. A still life painting was to me the most attractive choice because at least I would be able to control the lighting, background and subject matter without too much risk of it changing or of items being moved around by accident. I was eager to try and incorporate at least two of the techniques I tried out during Part 1, such as chiaroscuro, graded washes and to include both transparent and opaque finishes in one painting.  

Starting with a few line sketches, I later progressed to tonal sketches and colour studies. 

Some people might view this choice as rather conventional and boring, but I think it is a very absorbing genre and style and as well worthy of some exploration as any other area.

Charcoal line sketch 1

Line sketch 3?

charcoal tonal sketch 1

1. Pumpkin and candlestick - charcoal. Pumpkin looks too dominant and overbearing. Tried a few more arrangements with it but none seemed to look balanced. I added part of a circle going off the paper to the upper right. I think this helped to balance the arrangement a little, but not quite enough. 2. Removed pumpkin and replaced it with glass jug, two apples and half  a lemon, removing and reintroducing things in varied combinations. Up to this point the background was light in tone. NB not all the sketches are shown just yet, as I sent them off to my tutor without photographing them first.  3. etc. and Charcoal tonal sketch 1:
 a dark background was introduced at this point and with  it, making a comeback was the pumpkin. With an increasing sense of my lack of real progress decided to try again using the dark background. Don't know why I didn't think of this in the first place - I could now obtain the chiaroscuro effect I was toying with beforehand, much more easily. It instantly added drama, along with the artificial strong light from a spotlight at the right side. It was angled to the lower half of the set up and slightly downwards, intensifying the contrast of tones. The pumpkin  materialised on the off chance, but this time it didn't appear so dominant because there were three objects to the side and infront as well as a glass jug. To vary the texture and break up the loosely rounded forms I placed the tall narrow curved clear glass jug slightly behind to the right side. The pumpkin being only partly visible also seems to help prevent it from being over dominant.

Following this I did two colour studies in chalk pastel, then acrylic. Chalk pastel: the range of some hues was limited - couldn't get the acid greens of the apples with what I had. Used yellow and blues mixed with some greens - just couldn't get close to the actual green, similarly with the pear and pumpkin. They are actually much more luminous and bright than in the colour study. The trouble was, that all the greens and yellows I had were cold. Late discovery of an old greyhound warm green pastel helped but not enough - should have used it earlier. The real reason is most likely my lack of accurate colour judgement with pastels. Had a feeling when I used paint, things would work out differently, which fortunately they did...

part finished acrylic
colour study

finished 

For the painted colour study and the final painting I painted the dark background with phtallo blue and burnt umber using an old kitchen sponge. I now realize that this is an excellent way of covering the area quickly and relatively smoothly, naturally two coats were necessary. I scumbled over the background colour (phtallo blue, burnt umber and white)  for the lighter areas of the background. In the foreground area added a little ultramarine to warm up the blue and bring the surface forward. Then added more white to the mix for lighter areas. On the lightest parts of the objects - applied a thick white underpainting. Midtone greens on the apples from two old green mixes stored in jars, one of which was quite a very yellowy green. Added a little more blue and yellow occasionally to vary the colours. Orangey reflected shadows - raw sienna/raw umber. 

Part completed final
panting

Initially I thought this was the completely wrong hue but decided to leave it on the apples to pick up reflections from the pumpkin and pear. On the smaller colour study I tried some lighter versions of background colour in the shadows and less yellowy green on apple at back so the front one stands out in comparison. The rear apple looked artificial though. I think the mix was lacking variety in application. Pumpkin - main colour: alizarin crimson/lemon yellow used as produces more muted perhaps colder orange than from a mix of cadmium red/cadmium yellow. Cadmium yellow/pthallo blue/raw umber/cadmium for shadows on apples. Colours used on pear: raw sienna/cadmium yellow/touch of white, shadows as other fruit. Some obvious colour mistakes, in moments of madness, were made along the way, especially in shadows, which were not too difficult to cover up, thanks to acrylics being what they are. Generally throughout the painting, with the exception of the pear. the lightest areas were done with opaque underpainting of white and the overlying colours were either transparent or scumbled with both thin and opaque paint. I added touches of neighbouring colours in each piece of fruit and in the bottle.

Final painting - finished
will take another photo of this as
the reflection in the upper portion
is irritating..

Looking again at the charcoal sketch, I think it may have been a better idea to leave the bottle overlapping the back of the pumpkin because the ellipse on the bottom links the continuity of  the round shapes across to the apple on the right. I was overly concerned with using transparent glazes so as not to obliterate what little there was of the areas of white ground at the cost of some spontaneouty. I spent too much time fiddling around trying to balance lights and darks - as on the pear where I used glazes to play down the shadows then had to darken the darkest shadows again and brighten up some of the lightest areas with opaque paint. Part of the difficulty may have been much to do with using titanium white in certain glazes. I have now acquired some mixing white, which is more transparent, and hopefully will help to cure this problem in future. 

On reflection, my painting for Assignment 1 has a few features that I would like to change or do differently if attempting it again:
For reflected shadows  I would add subtle touches of colours from adjacent objects, for instance a hint of green from the apples on the facing surface of the pumpkin.
In the pear I would build up the highlighted areas with white, then cover it with a thin glaze of raw sienna and lemon yellow. I think this would give it much more luminosity. I discovered this was a trick that many of the old masters used.
The shadow behind the pear, on the apple doesn't have much depth as it is too opaque.

I can see what my tutor meant about the ellipse on the glass vessel and the top left of the pumpkin potentially benefiting from being eased back into the shadows more.
Later on I did alter the glass jug and a few other elements. On the glass jug, deciding its spout looked a bit vague, I defined it further. Then on the ellipse at the base I painted over the original with dark blue in as near as I could get to the existing hues to its surroundings - it took a few layers of paint to cover the previous one. For the revised ellipse I used a fairly dry brush paint consistency. I applied small amounts of thin glazes  in slightly varied tones to some of the dark blue background and surface tones, partly to blend in with the new mix I had applied around the base of the glass jug and to enhance some areas of light reflection, while keeping to cooler blues, blending them more than in the foreground, and to help enhance the look of depth and atmospheric perspective. This mixture/s for the glazes was added to shadowed areas of the apples and pear to suggest reflections from the dark blue cloth and on the shadow at the base of the pumpkin. I managed to push the top left of the pumpkin further into the shadows using a combination of the thin and slightly thicker glazes. Looking at it again later I think the effect would have been increased if had also darkened its left side, still it is a definite improvement on the earlier version.

Final painting post alterations NB There is 
more glare on this image than on the image above, causing it to
appear lighter  - which is not the case, I will have to try some other way ...

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro is a technique for producing bold contrasts of light and shade in pictorial representation to create depth and form. It means Chiaro (light) and scuro (dark) in Italian. From  its origins during the Renaissance many very well known artists over the centuries have used this technique to their advantage. Indeed for some it has become almost a trademark.
Leonardo Da Vinci pioneered chiaroscuro by establishing a monochrome underpainting using contrasting lights and darks. Then build up the painting with various coloured glazes. This can be seen clearly in Madonna (or Virgin) of the Rocks (1506) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_of_the_Rocks#mediaviewer/File:Leonardo_da_Vinci_-_Virgin_of_the_Rocks_(Louvre).jpg
 Leonardo's style is often regarded as sfumato as opposed to typical chiaroscuro of later years, because the tonal transitions are more subtle.


Later artists used chiaroscuro  to more dramatic effect such as Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Rubens, Rembrandt and Joseph Wright of Derby. They  were some of its greatest proponents and all used it to dramatic effect. The main characteristics of their paintings are the iilusion of a spotlight illuminating the main focal areas, surrounded by often expansive heavy dark areas giving the impression of nightime. These scenes would in fact usually be lit by candlelight, fire or moonlight.

Carravagio's highly dramatic style became instrumental in developing tenebrism where extreme chiaroscuro dominates.

There is a sensation of a strong pull towards the face of Christ in this painting. Brightly illuminated faces, hands and the armour covering arm of a soldier are all turned in the direction of one person - Jesus, with the exception of the person on the far left who appears to be in a panic trying to get away. Especially noticeable though is the light edge of the armour.
The main source of light seems to be from the left although there's a lantern held by a man on the right. Heightening the sense of drama, as with so many of Carravagio's works, is the violent theme of the painting and the harsh contrasts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taking_of_Christ_(Caravaggio)#mediaviewer/File:Caravaggio_-_Taking_of_Christ_-_Dublin.jpg


Strongly influenced by Carravagio, Rubens also exploited extreme effects of light and shade, as can be seen in The Massacre of the Innocents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents_(Rubens)#mediaviewer/File:Peter_Paul_Rubens_Massacre_of_the_Innocents.jpg      though the background is

less of a mystery.

In the second painting - Night Scene,:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_Night_Scene_-_WGA20423.jpg
 although the strong contrasts are very evident the two faces and the hands again are the focus, they are more subtle than in Rubens first painting shown here and Carravaggio's - above. This of course is in keeping with  the gentle happy theme of an old woman with a young boy at her side who appears to be lighting a candle off hers. The right eye of each of them has a noticeable sparkle.

Rembrandt - being another great exponent of dramatic contrasts was fond of portraits placing brightly illuminated faces against dark sombre backgrounds. However, as in these two self portraits, the tonal transitions are more blurred along the edges than on Carravagio's paintings and the light is quite soft on the second portrait, echoing the gentle looking nature of the subject. His early works used a single light source so this self portrait as a young man is probably one of them, hence the reason for the blurred edges:

http://www.humanitiesweb.org/spa/gcp/ID/5218/c/538

I would guess that the second one is lit the same way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-portrait_as_Zeuxis_Laughing


Joseph Wright of Derby was a painter of many subjects with a scientific theme,  containing large groups of people closely observing an experiment or studying a statue, all with strong chiaroscuro.

The two studies below show people viewing statues by candlelight. At the time candlelight used to illuminate statues in this way was commonly regarded as a good way of throwing on them a strange life.

In Academy by Lamplight the statue and the observer in bright focus appear to be transfixed by one another and. Between them are the small boy whose face looks up in wonderment and the man standing nearby with his head turned away to the left is looking rather nonchalant.

The centre of attention in the next painting is the small statue under intense observation by the three surrounding people. 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Wright_of_Derby_-_Academy_by_Lamplight_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

http://www.topofart.com/artists/Wright-of-Derby/art-reproduction/4281/Three-Persons-Viewing-the-Gladiator-by-Candle-Light.php

The next image is a prison scene, giving a real sense of bleakness owing to the expanses of extreme darkness around the outer perimeter, framing a corridor like structure leading to a small glowing window suggesting 'light at the end of the tunnel' - hopefully.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Wright_of_Derby._Small_Prison_Scene._c.1787-90..jpg

I noticed when searching online through some of his other paintings, that he was also a prolific painter of volcanic eruptions, which of course would have been in keeping with his dramatic use of tonal contrasts.

What is common to many of the paintings above are  the mysterious dark backgrounds and the strong tonal contrasts bringing the brightly lit figures into dramatically strong focus.