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.

Categories: Alice in Wonderland, art shows, completed, drawings, portrait by Airn
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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.

Categories: completed, dead layer, master study, oil painting, portrait by Airn
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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

Categories: completed, drawings, master study, oil painting, portrait by Airn
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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.

Categories: completed, dead layer, dream city, oil painting, painting tips, portrait, surreal by Airn
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Although this is only my second blog post on this painting, I have been working on it for months and spending a good deal of time on it. I’m almost done…I hope to finish in a couple more sessions. Here’s my version of this Petrus Christus painting, generally referred to as “Portrait of a Young Lady” or similar:

Portrait of a Young Lady study - work in progress

The accursed decorative silver metalwork around the hat is the main thing I need to finish…it’s really caused me a lot of bother. I would have been done with this painting weeks ago but I keep “fixing” that part, I have painted over it several times now. I’ll write about it more when I post the final version, hopefully sooner rather than later!

*Update: For the completed painting see: http://www.chromaticblack.com/completed/petrus-christus-study-completed-portrait-of-a-young-lady

Categories: master study, oil painting, portrait, work-in-progress by Airn
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I’m usually working on 3 or 4 paintings at a time…here’s another one I started recently, a portrait of Brother Cadfael as played by Sir Derek Jacobi.

Brother Cadfael painting work in progress 05-26-09

It’s oil on panel, 8×10 inches. I am using a raw umber dead layer underpainting on this one, which I will glaze over later with color. At first it progressed really rapidly, but I keep altering the mouth; it’s been really tough to get it right! This should be a relatively quick painting though, since once underpainting is done I won’t have too much farther to go and there is no complex stuff like the metalwork on the pesky Petrus Christs study I am doing, which is driving me crazy.

I love the Cadfael series, and murder mysteries in general…I plan on doing a few other portraits of famous sleuths, including Nero Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) and maybe Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett).

Update 07-11-09 – Here’s a much more recent version: Brother Cadfael – Sir Derek Jacobi work-in-progress 2

Categories: oil painting, portrait, work-in-progress by Airn
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'A Calling', Airn LeBus (after Bouguereau), 11x14 inches, oil on canvas, 2009

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):

• burnt and raw umber
• mars black
• titanium white
• yellow ochre
• burnt sienna
• vermillion (hue)

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

Categories: completed, master study, oil painting, portrait by Airn
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A couple months ago decided I should take a bit of a break from my own original paintings and study some more old-master type paintings and drawings in order to learn.

Here’s one of the paintings I am working on, I started this in mid-February 2009. The original is by Petrus Christus and is referred to as Portrait of a Young Girl or Portrait of a Young Lady, etc. I’m painting it with oil on panel in an 11×14 inch size, although I think the original is closer to 8×10 inches:

Petrus Christus study work in progress

I found two fairly hi-res photos of this work, one is very cracked and the other seemed to have less cracks in it. After comparing the two though I realized that it just looks like they blurred one to remove the cracks, as well as cropped it, and the coloration and contrast is way different than the other and it’s even a bit rotated too! I now know that I need to seek out a bunch of photos of a famous piece of art since they can be wildly different.

Even though the drawing is pretty simple, it took a while to get her to look the same, she kept looking older in my version. The original is kinda odd, especially the nose and the right eye. I noticed that the original looks really strange when you look at it in a mirror. This is the first master-level painting that I have seen that looks weird when viewed in that way, every other one I have tried looks perfect in a mirror.

Partly because the original is so cracked and it’s hard to see some details, I am deviating in many respects from the original. I’m basically duplicating the form of the painting but partly in my own style. One thing that is awesome about this is that her gaze really follows you around the room, it’s rather eerie.

I did the face and skin in a raw umber dead layer underpainting first. Once I was satisfied with that, after many sessions and many hours, I started glazing transparent combinations of yellow ochre, burnt umber, and vermillion (hue) over the dry underpainting. The background was also painted with a few layers of glazed burnt sienna and burnt umber.

I still have a ways to go on this one. The decorative band around the hat has been very difficult, but I think I am close to figuring out how to do it.

*Update: For the completed painting see: http://www.chromaticblack.com/completed/petrus-christus-study-completed-portrait-of-a-young-lady

Categories: dead layer, master study, oil painting, portrait, work-in-progress by Airn
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I’ve been working on this painting since late November 2008, this is tentatively called Graveyard Girl From The Dream City and is oil on 11×14 inch panel.

For all posts about this painting, see the dream city category.

You can also jump to just the finished version here: graveyard-girl-from-the-dream-city-completed

Graveyard Girl from the Dream City (work in progress)

Detail view:

Graveyard Girl from the Dream City (detail) - work in progress

Planning, transferring the drawing, imprimatura

I initially wanted to paint something like a combination of my old painting Pigtail Gurl and Dream City in a larger format and with the idea that I can do a better job now that I have more experience. I wanted to experiment more with the “dead layer” technique too, especially after trying it with my Christmas Angel painting and having some success with it there. As I was planning it out the drawing got more complicated and the buildings and such ending up being a bit less weird than the Dream City, although I will still use a similar palette and the skyline and sky will be similar.

I used Poser software to create a model of the girl that I lit and posed as I had envisioned and then used that as I would a normal photo reference. I did the line drawing all in Photoshop, and then printed it out at Kinko’s. I also did some color study stuff in Photoshop. I used graphite transfer paper to get it on the panel (tracing over my printed-out drawing). This is the first time I’ve tried this technique and it worked well, but I dislike the overall process and aesthetic of digital art so on projects I have been going back to traditional media (pencil/paper/etc) for everything, including the planning and initial drawing. After recently looking at some Albrecht Dürer stuff I’m even more inspired to get better at drawing and to generally eschew digital techniques. I ended up changing the drawing considerably later, I will post that later as a comparison to the final painting.

I went over the drawing on the panel in sepia ink (ultra fine Sharpie) and put a thin wash of olive greenish color over everything (imprimatura) using Turpenoid, a little Galkyd Light, tiny bit of red ochre, yellow ochre light, and ivory black. It really didn’t need to be that complex…a couple times recently I have used a few transparent coats of acrylic, very thin to keep it smooth, just black and yellow, for an olive green color. The imprimatura is partly to wash away the graphite and seal the pen, and partly as a ground for the next layer since the panel I was using was too smooth and shiny. You can also let the brush strokes show through to add variety and texture, although in this one I didn’t do that. I made sure not to use too much turps as it will cause the paint to lose cohesion, that happened to me on my Two Mushrooms painting. Using Turpenoid in the paint is not my favorite thing, that’s another reason for me to use acrylic for the imprimatura.

Dead layer underpainting

With the girl’s face, I am again glazing over a raw umber dead layer underpainting. It is very nice to just focus on the tonal values and such without worrying about color initially.

My first session of underpainting for the face ended up being way too dark, partly cause I had a rather bright light on my easel and it was too close to the painting, duh. I’m getting better about physically stepping back from the painting a lot, moving the light around and viewing under other lights, looking at the painting in a mirror, upside down, etc. I also know from reading and my experience with “failed” glazing attempts that the underpainting should be rather lighter that desired for the final result, since I will be glazing onto the shadows as well as the lighter areas later, darkening most of it except the highlights.

Here’s a photo close to the end of the dead layer stage (although this was too dark!) and then a pic of the work-in-progress after I had glazed on some color:

Dead layer version of Graveyard Girl from the Dream City

In the first dead layer underpainting session I spent about 3 hours mostly on the face. I used raw umber and titanium white with no turpentine, oil, or other medium. I mixed up 4 shades on my palette and was happy at first to have a fairly nice reference (for a change) from my Poser rendering. Later I bemoaned the poser reference for the lack of realistic details, a real photo would have been superior.

I used several of the same-sized flat and filbert / tapered brushes so that I could use one for each value of umber…I painted all the darkest areas, then moved up in lightness and painted a bit wet-into-wet, doing a little blending afterward with clean dry brushes.

After that I spent several more sessions working on the face, lightening further and defining features, etc. It seems generally better to err on the side of it being too light rather than too dark…as long as you don’t lose the drawing and definition between elements, it’s easier to go back and darken shadows than to lighten everything up. It can take several sessions to cover up a dark area with light since I paint thinly, and it can look funky and chalky putting white over a darker color when the dark shows through.

Palette and glazing over the dead layer

I used cadmium yellow light (hue) + mars black for the greens so far, and have been using fairly fine bristle brushes a lot lately. Pthalho blue for water and sky, french ultramarine in the sky too. Clothing is prussian blue. For black I use mars and white is titanium.

The flesh tone glazing has been vermillion and yellow ochre with bleached linseed oil. Before I glaze I “oil out” the skin area by rubbing on the oil with my finger, letting it sit briefly and rubbing off the excess with a finger or very carefully with a paper towel. Dust has been a major issue with glazing, I constantly need to check for and remove dust from the painting as I am working on it. Storing the painting in between sessions face down carefully leaning against a wall helps. Dust on big brushes is probably the biggest culprit.

So far I have spent about 24 hours total painting this with another 10 or so drawing and planning.

The next post on this will probably be in a few weeks and will be the completed painting.

I am going to do a separate post later about what I have learned so far about glazing and using a dead layer.

Categories: dead layer, dream city, oil painting, painting tips, portrait, surreal, work-in-progress by Airn
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I really admire Elizabeth-Louise Vigee-Le Brun and the impressive number of wonderful paintings she has left us. Later I will try to copy at least of one of her paintings, mostly for learning purposes, but for now I tried duplicating one of her chalk drawings. This was kinda a quickie, maybe I will try a better one later with chalk or graphite…I was not too into colored pencils, I rarely use them and now I remember why. I couldn’t really erase and they break when I try to sharpen them with my normal sharpener, I was just flailing in general.

Still I like this enough to post it here. I wanted to do this without a grid or any visual aid, and I’m happy with the likeness, the shading and such was rough but the overall form worked out pretty well. I’ve been working through the exercises in “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Workbook” and some of the sighting stuff and negative space tips etc have definitely helped me, I had tried this same drawing a few weeks ago with a much crummier result. I’m also really learning to stop and check the work out from a few feet away, upside down, etc, to prevent problems with proportion and other unhappy surprises later.

Next I am trying a drawing by Michaelangelo, this time with graphite pencils (that I can erase) on smooth paper (on which I can shade smoothly).

Here is my drawing after Vigee-Le Brun, my version is about 4×5 inches and is colored pencils on fairly rough, colored paper:

Drawing after Vigee-Le Brun, Girl Wearing a Veil

Categories: completed, drawings, master study, portrait by Airn
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