OK, I changed major stuff on this painting and it’s done for real now. I based her new face a bit on Lila Lee, i.e. Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith in the film Lemora.
This isn’t the last oil painting based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that I’ll be doing, I would love to do another dark-ish one, perhaps with her falling or with the caterpillar 
Alice's Picnic in Wonderland
Here’s a detail of it:
Alice's Picnic in Wonderland (detail)
Hexenring linocut
I finished my first linocut, it’s of a ‘fairy circle’ or toadstool ring around a grave. In German it’s called a hexenring.
This is 4×5 inches. Linocuts are pretty interesting stuffs, you have to carve everything into the linoleum block in reverse, and then roll ink onto it and imprint on paper. I drew it all on the block directly in pencil, then pen, and then used a few different tools to carve it out. It took a long time . I will probably do another one, but will either work larger or a bit less detailed…I tried to cram too much detail than is possible with the normal linocut tools so I had to scratch stuff out with a tool designed for scratchboard, which was kind of a pain. Still fun overall, and I like the old medieval feel of the process, like you are practicing an art form that is very old.
I finished my oil painting portrait of Brother Cadfael. This is based on the excellent show starring Sir Derek Jacobi…it’s a favorite of mine. I started this painting in late March of this year and spent about 24 hours on it over 6 months (including the initial sketch).
To see all 3 posts about this painting, search for ‘cadfael’ then click a post.
Here are photos of the painting both framed and unframed:
Brother Cadfael by Airn LeBus, 8x10 inches, oil on panel, 2009.
Brother Cadfael by Airn LeBus, 8x10 inches, oil on panel, 2009.
I used my current standard technique of making a photocopy of my original drawing so that it will stay intact when I transfer it onto the panel or canvas. I then transferred it by rubbing the back of the photocopy with soft 4B pencil and tracing over it with a pen onto the panel. I then used a fine sharpie over that (on the panel). I put a transparent imprimatura over it to seal it, wash away the pencil, and give some interesting brushstrokes in the background which may show through a bit later.
Next I painted the face as a “dead layer” with just raw umber and white, over many sessions. Once I was mostly satisfied with that I started glazing transparent color over the face. I also added more opaque parts and highlights, and fixed a few things with the features…although they are still a bit off, I settled with the look of it. The hair and robe/cowl were more directly painted but still with some glazing.
Regrettably, I didn’t plan the inscription out properly so it took a while to figure out how to arrange it, what to put, and to actually paint it. It took a few sessions…I used paintings by Albrecht Durer and Hans Holbein the Younger as inspirations for the inscription look and feel. I wrote Cadfael’s full name, “Cadfael ap [son of] Meilyr ap Dafydd” and my little symbol of a cross, eye, crown, and initials ARL. I find that painting text, especially when there is no initial drawing or guide, to be quite difficult…but I enjoy the challenge. Compared to plopping on some text in Photoshop on some digital art, it’s like the contrast between walking into a store and buying a shirt vs. cutting the cloth, designing, and sewing one yourself
I put it in a dark , sturdy, and somewhat simple frame which fits well with the Benedictine nature of Cadfael. I also had played with having his gaze pointed at the viewer but it seemed to fit him better to have him looking off to the side. Pretty happy with this one…overall the mood and look are what I was going for.
(Update 01-04-10: I changed this painting, and switched the pictures here to the new version. See the Alice in Wonderland category for posts about the changes.)
I finished my Alice in Wonderland painting. It’s called Alice’s Picnic in Wonderland and is 11×14 inches, oil on canvas. This will be at the Alice in Wonkaland show at Muddy Waters in Santa Barbara in July.
Here’s the finished painting:
Alice's Picnic in Wonderland
I made extra sure I was happy with the drawing before transferring it to the canvas, so once I started painting it went very smoothly. Almost every painting session was very good and the whole thing overall was very satisfying. The hedge maze took a lot of time to draw, but once it had been planned out it was pretty simple to paint. If you look close you can see she is wearing a little scarab cameo…I felt the need to put something Egyptian in there. I like the contrast of the grinning Cheshire cat (which is totally based on John Tenniel’s famous illustrations) with Alice’s somber expression. I wanted this to be a little dark without doing the whole overdone Gothic Alice thing (which I am waaay sick of).
Here’s a detail view:
Alice's Picnic in Wonderland (detail)
The main thing I would have done differently is use a good reference for the face, which wasn’t based on anyone specific. The face is small, like an inch high, so tiny brushstrokes yielded big changes…it was pretty tough. Since it’s on canvas the texture also makes the painting look a little different depending on what angle you look at it, etc, so there was a ton of stepping back, looking in other light, upside down, and the like. Well, I do a lot of that normally anyway. I did use an old vintage photo for the general figure reference but changed the dress, face, head shape, hair, etc. I didn’t use a grid or anything, I have been doing a grid when I am studying a master work and trying to copy it almost exactly but whenever possible I’m working on my drawing skillz without a grid.
My palette for this was something along the lines of mars black, titanium white, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow light hue, vermillion hue, burnt umber, raw umber, burnt sienna, french ultramarine, and phthalo blue. The greens are mostly black + cadmium yellow light with some earth tones and yellow ochre. These are all pretty much the standard colors I use lately, except I am going to switch to cadmium red hue since it looks very similar to the vermillion but does not contain lead. I use that in the flesh tones: yellow ochre + red + white + burnt umber in darker areas. I hear that using a complementary color in the shadows is supposed to be nice but so far it hasn’t worked out too well for me
This painting was pretty much “direct”…I did not do a monochromatic underpainting for the flesh tones, like I normally do when painting on panel for portrait stuff (this is on canvas).
I spent about 6 hours over 2 weeks drawing this, and then about 16 hours painting it. That is about half the time my last two paintings took, this was a quick one since everything just fell into place, mostly. I started it in early May and finished in late June.
For other posts about Alice and my other Wonderland-related paintings, see the Alice in Wonderland category.
I’m including this miniature painting in the Alice in Wonkaland show. Alice Liddell was the real life inspiration for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This is based on a photo by Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll. It’s 2 x 2.75 inches, acrylic on wood panel, 2009. I put it in a little frame and painted on it “Alice Pleasance Liddell 1852-1934″.
Miniature painting of Alice Pleasance Liddell by Airn LeBus
See the Alice in Wonderland category for my other related stuff including a larger picnic scene with another Alice.
This is my first acrylic painting in more than a year, I normally paint with oils but I had limited time on this one since it was for a show and I used up all my time in the first attempt, which was oil. I abandoned that first attempt and redid the whole thing. This acrylic one took about 4-6 hours over about a week, in maybe 5 sessions. It’s the smallest painting I have tried and it was really fun! To give idea of size, one eye is about the size of half a rice grain. I will be doing some additional miniatures in the next few months, probably in oil though.
I did seven small drawings of this same thing, but really the second drawing was the best-looking, although kind of cartoony:
Alice Liddell drawing
I used a different drawing for the first version of the painting. I might post that painting later since I am changing it. I spent a TON of time on that first painting, which was in oil, and kept having problems with features being misaligned, etc etc etc. I kept making big changes to it and I think it was mostly because the original sketch (again, not shown here) was not correct. I redrew the whole thing a few times until I thought it was right and used that for the basis of the acrylic painting above.
If you want to learn more about Alice Liddell, Charles Dodgson, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I would really recommend a cool book which I just discovered called The Other Alice. I bought it used on Amazon but it seems readily available wherever. It’s kind of both a kid’s and adult’s book and is chock full of illustrations.
I finished my Petrus Christus master study. This painting is usually referred to as “Portrait of a Young Lady” or “Portrait of a Girl”, etc. His version was painted c. 1470.
Here’s my version, completed and in a nice frame. Portrait of a Young Lady, Airn LeBus after Petrus Christus, 11×14 inches, oil on panel, 2009:
Portrait of a Young Lady, Airn LeBus after Petrus Christus, 11x14 inches, oil on panel, 2009.
My version differs from the original in many ways, mostly on purpose with a couple things unintentional
Here’s the original: Petrus painting at wikimedia
I wasn’t looking to copy the original painting exactly and did my own thing on stuff like the background, eyes, highlights, and overall tone. Also, because the original is very cracked and small I had difficulty seeing how some parts looked. The necklace and decorative metalwork of the hennin hat look a lot different than his.
Petrus Christus study - detail
I painted this with oil on panel, and used a “dead layer” underpainting in raw umber first for the face and body. After I was satisfied with the way it looked, I started glazing flesh tones over the dead layer, very thin, with bleached linseed oil and just a small amount of paint.
The main colors I used in this painting were mars black, raw umber, burnt sienna and burnt umber, vermilion (hue), yellow ochre, and titanium white.
I wanted to do the text inscription after looking at some paintings by Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein the Younger. That part on my painting was pretty painstaking to execute and plan; it was the most complicated text I have painted so far. I did it over 4 or 5 sessions, getting the overall lettering correct first and letting it dry before embellishing it, and putting the raw umber drop shadows last when the rest was dry to avoid smearing what I had already done. I lightly oiled out the area each time before starting a new session.
Here’s a photo without the frame, you can see the detail of the inscription and stuff better:
Petrus Christus study without the frame
One of my favorite things about this painting is that her gaze really follows you around the room. Anywhere you are, if you glance towards the painting she is looking right at you. It’s a little creepy
I spent about 45 hours painting this. The drawing took an additional 6 hours or so. A lot of the painting time was spent painting and repainting the metalwork and trying to figure out how to do that and the necklace. I spent at least 3 times longer on the necklace and maybe 6 times longer on the hat metalwork than I would have if I had known exactly how to proceed. So as always, this was a learning process…that was one of the primary reasons I did this painting in the first place, so I guess it worked out
I have two other posts about this painting, to see them look at the master study category.
My framed Petrus Christus study next to my Cleopatra drawing (after Michelangelo). The cool Medusa statue was purchased at Michael’s craft store last Halloween
Petrus Christus study, Cleopatra, and Medusa
I just finished this painting, which I started in late November 2008. It’s called Graveyard Girl from the Dream City and is 11×14 inches, oil on panel. It’s a kind of surreal portrait of an imaginary girl in ornate finery standing in front of a tombstone-strewn night landscape with a dream city background.
For all posts about this painting, see the dream city category. I have a lot more info about this project in the earlier posts.
Graveyard Girl from the Dream City by Airn LeBus. Oil on panel, 11x14 inches, 2009.
I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, it has a kind of shining dark clarity which I think is unique. Painting on panel and leaving a lot of hard edges yielded a crispness which contrasts with the surreal nature of the painting. It took “too long”, but I learned a lot. A lot of time was spent on the face fixing some issues, and a lot on the clothing which I had not planned out properly and which I changed halfway through. So like many of my paintings, much time was spent re-doing stuff or experimenting / figuring things out. I think painting on panel is more difficult for me than canvas, but I can’t glaze in the same way on canvas so I have been using panel when I am going for harder edges and lots of glazing.
Total time spent on this: about 40 hours painting and 14 hours drawing and planning.
Graveyard Girl from the Dream City (detail)
On the clothing, I suffered from lack of reference material and the small size of the details. I wanted to do some gold embroidery like in the Ghent Altarpiece but after trying it for a few hours / sessions, I ended up painting over it and adopting a simpler approach. The gems in the middle ended up looking cool but part of the effect was accidental — I wiped off some paint and removed some lower layers by mistake. It made a kind of glow-effect that I kept and built on.
I like the final glazed-over face, even though I initially painted a dead layer that was too dark and it took me many careful sessions to lighten it. I left some parts “too dark” since she looks kind of corpse-like and it fits with the graveyard scene. I’m not quite sure if she is undead, or a ghost, or what. Her eyes follow you around the room though, so that must mean she is still alive
I glazed vermillion (hue) and yellow ochre over the raw umber dead layer underpainting to get the flesh tone. I also put more opaque white/yellow/vermillion for highlights and to lighten up the underpainting.
Graveyard Girl from the Dream City (background detail)
Once I finished this, I didn’t using retouching varnish. Varnish in general can really unify and deepen a painting and just overall make it look way better, but you can’t use a final varnish on an oil painting until it is truly dry; a general rule of thumb seems to be a year. You can put retouching varnish on when it is only touch-dry though, like maybe a week or two after your painting is done. I used to do that with all my paintings but a few of them are still sticky months later so I am going to stop using it. This one would be at major risk for the same thing, since many parts are thick with many fairly oily layers so I am already concerned about drying times.
Switching to mars black has helped, since it dries much faster than ivory black which I was using before. I also started ‘oiling out’ much more lightly after parts were sticky for many days due to too much oil in the oiling out and glazing process. Dust is also a major concern when the painting is sticky like that. Now I very lightly apply oil with my fingers and wipe as much off as possible, again with fingers or very gently putting a paper towel against the painting and running a finger over it to get the excess oil up. Even after a week of drying, rubbing a paper towel over the oiled-out painting seems to remove paint. I usually try to paint very thinly so depending on the color used and oil amount, a week is usually enough time for me to oil out and do another session. I use bleached linseed oil which I understand dries faster than normal linseed and also yellows less.
Who knows about all this stuff though, because scouring the web or books gives conflicting info, and there are so many different combinations of technique and materials which can yield different results. I just read books and search on the web, take everything I read with a grain of salt, and try stuff and if it seems to work I keep doing it.
'A Calling', Airn LeBus (after Bouguereau), 11x14 inches, oil on canvas, 2009
Here’s a link to the original painting on artrenewal.org.
I started this in early February 2009 and completed it in early April.
I spent about 4 hours drawing it with pencil on paper in the same size I would paint, 11×14 inches. The hands were the toughest part and took several sessions to get correct.
I transferred the drawing to the canvas with graphite paper. I then went over it in sepia ink with a Sharpie and put a thin imprimatura olive-greenish wash over everything (turpentine, bleached linseed oil, ivory black+yellow ochre).
Once that was dry I started the painting, using a direct technique (no monochromatic underpainting with subsequent color glazing). I mostly used bristle brushes and oil straight out of the tube with no medium.
My palette was the following (with some exceptions like the blue pencil):
I saw early on that the painting was turning out a lot different from the original tone-wise…the contrast was much less dramatic. I still liked the way my painting was looking though so I decided to keep my version as it was turning out and didn’t try to alter my version to look more like Bouguereau’s.
The original is about 22×18 inches according to artrenewal.org, and mine is 11×14 inches. Overall my version is less detailed than his, which was due to the smaller nature of my painting, my current skill level, and the amount of time I was willing to spend on this. Overall I am happy with it, especially the hands, since this is the first time I have painted hands
The painting work on this took me about 19 hours. I spent the most time painting the eye area of the face, the hands, and the clothing.
Now I need to finish my Petrus Christus study
I totally redesigned the completed paintings gallery and added some recent stuff. You can always get to it from the icon under GALLERIES on the top right side of the blog.
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