The Angel's face - Painting eyes, hairs with increasingly more detail

Just a quick note about today's work. I did not have much time to make any significant progress, but the angel's head was finally dry from since I last worked on it. I just wanted to work on the hair, but did also work on the eyes. You clearly see now how the angel is watching away to its right side.

rendering textile: the cloak.

Like for the rest of the painting, I follow 3 steps:

1) quick drawing with brush. A light 2 color glaze is what you see on the picture as of oct 4.

2) Using 2 different reds as well as white, I create volume by adding shadows and reflections. the drawing gets more precise, but the contrast is too high which is done on purpose. This will be smoothen at the very next step. For now this is what you see on the picture marked as of October 5.

3) Once the paint is dry, which is going to take at least 2 weeks, I will add a red/brown glaze that will create color uniformity while preserving volume effect. By the way the glaze will be absorbed by the texture, it will create similar impression as what you can see on an old painting.  But we will have to wait a little bit for that.

Click on the picture to enlarge

Working on the women's face

The drawing in its initial stage was, here too, very approximate. I worked on giving more glance to the hair, but so far only did little to the face itself, just adding some red and white highlights.

  

Working on the women's face

Today I worked on the 2 women's face as well as on the horse's mouth.
None of the result is to be considered a finished stage.

Today's starting point looked like an initial 'painted sketch', the drawing was very approximate. Slight touches of quick strokes, mostly glazing rather than heavily painted. Now it was time to fine tune the drawing, and to add paint to it in order to show volume.

Whether using glaze techniques or working with more heavily paint strokes, it is important to always start with darker colors first. and only then to apply brighter colors, especially on a still wet base. Trying to do the contrary would result in turning dark colors into ugly grey, kaki or any other unexpected pale color. It would also take a much heavier amount of dark color when trying to darken a bright oil base that is not dry.

But when I say I need to first apply darker colors, it does not mean dealing with just black or even  brown, it really means dealing with darker color than the one to be used on the spot right next to it.
So even if I am only working on a bright spot, I would always start with a tinted white before applying pure white brilliance effect.

In order to bring volume to a painted face there should not be any large surface with similar color. A face is no flat surface, and even aside the fact the skin itself may have its own tint variations, you can say that almost every square millimeter is exposed to slightly different light conditions, light reflections, and brilliance. This how it came today:

As a result the face is showing a way more intense and emotional look. Hairs show more detail and movement. Leaving it drying for a week is necessary before I can work in this area again.

I finished the day, adding details to the brown horse's open mouth:

Painting the horses muscles

Today I continued to work on the left side of the painting. The angels head need to dry before I can continue working on it. So I decided to spend some time working on improving the drawing of the foot of one of the women. My initial drawing was too approximate and out of proportions. Some shadows and highlight will be added to create volume. This can only be added once today's work is dry, meaning in 4 to 5 days..

I also worked on bringing volume to the horse's muscles, and and some brilliance from sweat.

Finally I painted the horse bards. I improvised some kind of nest textile, with bright highlights. Again, shadows will be added once dry. I think the original painting shows a panther skin rather than textile. Since I don't have a high resolution picture of Rubens' painting I will leave it like that for now.

Click on picture to enlarge.

This is all I did for that day. I just add an overall view showing the current stage.
Thanks for reading

Working on the Angel on the left side of the painting

I am using slow drying oil, and I can now correct the drawing and add details to a face that really looks ugly at its earliest stage. The reason it looked that way to begin with was because I always start to "fill" the canvas, with no attention to detail, in order to have an overall idea of what the painting is going to look like.

Some people have told me that the painting was great, because they saw it as a whole that looked finished to them (or just wanted to be nice with me..). My answer was to ask them to focus on details, taking 10 square inch surface at a time. Now focusing on a single face like the Angel located on the left side of the canvas, I told them that I would not buy that angel face at this obviously unfinished stage. I worked a couple hours on Thursday, improving the drawing, shadows and smooth edge transitions. The result is much better, but I still need to work on the hairs, the eyes and add some skin light reflections to bring that angel to life..

  
In the end it will not look like a real baby face, simply because it will need to respect Rubens' style. In the 17th century there is really no masterpiece that I know of, that is able to show a baby face that looked real. Now that said I would still like to improve this face but again, I will need a better picture of the original painting with recognizable details. If not I will have to improvise.

I have been painting for years now, and because I could not afford buying masterpieces or even just decent antique paintings, I decided to paint reproductions myself. I really started when I was a kid, and by the age of 13 I learned oil painting at he Art & Deco  class in Strasbourg (France).

I never wanted to make a job out of my little talent, but I really enjoyed painting on my free time. I painted landscapes, mostly impressionist style, and I travelled through the french countryside to find inspiration.

Today, at age 47, I love making reproductions, but I have to recognize that even if it lacks inspiration (well a copy is a copy), it can still be very difficult to do, if we want to respect details, style, colors, as close as possible to the original one.

For now I am working on a RUBENS. The painting I choose is called the "The rape of the daughters of Leucippus". Frankly, I don't like the title of this painting, though I like the painting. It refers to some Greek Mythology and there is plenty information on the net that describes the story behind the scene. I have read that Rubens added two angels on the painting in order to alter the rudeness of the representation. Supposedly, if an angel guides the horse, the scene cannot relate to something that is totally wrong..

I will not comment in this blog the reason why RUBENS choose to paint this scene, though I think he was impressed by some earlier sculptural representation of the same scene. My intention here is to share with you more technical aspects of painting a reproduction of this type.

The original painting was made around 1615-1618. For those who wanted to see the actual painting, it is located at the "Alte Pinakothek" in Munich (Germany). It is almost square: 88.19 x 82. 87 in. These are unusual proportions, but it seems that the format has really been chosen to compress the subject in a window that leaves close to no room for the background.

From what I've read on the net, it appeared to be painted on wood panel. Looking closely at the pictures I would find on google, I am not quite sure of it. Maybe someone can confirm whether it was painted on canvas or on wood panel. For the artist this is making a huge difference, and painting on a panel allows much more attention to detail, whereby linen grain may create its own artistic effect but can turn into nightmare if you try to paint a thin hair... Canvas may need to be prepared with additional material, in such way that the surface becomes flat and grainless.

To start with this reproduction, I choose a size of 48 x 48 in. It is half the size of the original, though it is still big for any modern apartment's wall.. My next problem was to find a decent picture of the original painting. Well, I did not find such a picture yet, and the only one I found so far were of poor quality, with excessive contrast, saturated colors, and poor resolution.

So if anyone has made decent pictures at the museum that I could use, and is willing to share those, I would really appreciate the help. Even just detail pictures, showing limited portion of the painting can be of some great help.

I have been working for 3 years now on this project. Oil painting of this type is always done using slow drying multi layers of paint. Drying times between layers can take 2 to 3 weeks. So when I see commercial websites proposing museum grade reproductions that can be made in any size, supposedly done by artist within in a couple weeks, I can only doubt about the quality of these reproductions, if they are reproductions at all. These are mostly "giclee" which is a printing process that can, for sure, reproduce in any size a photo on a canvas. If it is really hand made, such an artist would have to use fast drying oil, which always tend to cut out painted subjects and gives poor result for smooth and transparent transitions. The result is a cartoon like, poor reproduction. Well what else can customers expect for $300 on a masterpiece that took 3 years to be achieved by a master like RUBENS?

In my case, I try to take my time and do it right. Now to be honest I am far from being satisfied of my own work so far. It has been 2 years already, working on it. It will need important improvements and I will share with you my progress.

So far here is were I stand:

I am going to post details, and progression in the days to come so you can see how I will improve and finalize this work.

Thanks for reading.