Munsell Grayscale

The idea behind this image is fairly self-explanatory I believe. However, my intention behind creating it is (providing I can get a fairly accurate print out of it) is to have a guide to help me judge values and pre-mix grays and colors to specific values. I understand that one can buy a Munsell grayscale chip book that includes about 100 steps from black to white which would be most useful as well. However, if you would like to print out this image for your own purposes please feel free to do so. I intend in the future to correspond these values to specific colors and/or extend the grayscale to match specific colors, stay tuned to see how this develops.

On His Blindness, John Milton

Milton Dictating to His Daughter by Henry Fuseli

WHEN I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.

wburg show

Coverage of the show. Thanks to Adam Tyson.

RICHARD SCHMID Portrait Painting Landscape MAY

Inspiration for May!

The Portrait Sketch with Jeremy Lipking

Love his work.

Portrait of Madame Gautreau

Portrait of Madame Gautreau by John Singer Sargent

Pretty simple and basic, not too over the top extrordinaire, really a colored line drawing, a good one to copy. I think the dress is ivory black mixed with ultramarine, he's got some earth colors, burnt sienna perhaps, and to the left of her head cool and warm mixed to get a grey (ultramarine and sienna?) Then he's got some cooler blues, not cerulean which is grainy, maybe manganese blue or a green mixed with ultramarine (viridian and ultramarine possibly.) To the right of her head, the violet is a pure unmixed color to my eye. I noticed on one of his Venetian watercolors, he had some kind of violet (again I believe is pure, not mixed) which he floated on top. They had less choices than we have today, it could be cobalt violet, maybe, I'm not sure (an expensive color, but hey, when your Sargent....) or mauve perhaps (I'll have to break out the Ralph Mayer and Max Doerner on this, anyone with any ideas or possibilities or knowledge on the subject of Sargent and Homer watercolor palettes, I would greatly welcome). There are a host of colors invented since 1940 that he didn't have, they are more bright and not always lightfast (but in fairness some are and can be utilized to advantage), I'm interested in trying to find palette similar to Sargent and Homer's.

Timeless Detail

Timeless Detail by Daniel F. Gerhartz

"I never think about pushing the emotional content or style of my paintings. It is my firm belief that if artists are honest and faithful to what they see, recognizing that God's creations are far more powerful than anything they could invent or any emotion they could impose on a subject, their statement will automatically come through to the viewer in a way that constitutes a personal style or vision."

from the Winter 2005 issue of Worshop magazine

Elephant Painting

I was very touched when I first saw this. I did a little online research subsequently to find out about elephants that paint and learned that they are trained in Thailand, and you can buy their paintings online. However, this particular elephant has been able to master doing a representation. Yes he (or she) was trained, nonetheless the thought occurred to me that among us there are those who seem to hold and manipulate a paint brush with such ease, control, versatility that we call them "masters". It would seem to me that this particular elephant is a master among his (or her) peers.

Love for the City

study for the Slav Epic by Alphonse Mucha

"Imagine an artist, and if an artist had spent all the last years of his or her life on one particular work of art, maybe it would be a novel or a poem or a sculpture or something like that, imagine a great artist spending all, doing nothing else, sanctifying him or herself to do this, don't you think that when it was done, you could look at it and you could tell a little bit about the artist? Absolutely. In fact, frankly, a whole lot more than if you just sat down and had an interview. Go look at the art!"

from the sermon, Love for the City by Tim Keller

Sargent

The information we do have has come from examination of his pictures and direct analysis of his paint. The same commonly available range of pigments is seen in virtually all of the Tate's later portraits and on existing palettes. The range is quite wide but does not include every pigment available at that time. He regularly used Mars yellow (a synthetic iron oxide) and cadmium yellow; viridian and emerald green, sometimes mixed; vermilion and Mars red, both alone and mixed; madder; synthetic ultramarine or cobalt blue; and ivory black, sienna, and Mars brown. The dark backgrounds of many portraits include a mixture of ivory black, Mars brown,and a generous quantity of paint medium: a combination that produces a color similar to the traditional Van Dyke brown. A pale shade of chrome yellow, cerulean blue, red lead, cadmium red, and cobalt violet were found on occasion, but not in every portrait examined. There is a more limited selection of blue and yellow pigments in the later portraits than in the earlier ones. This narrow range of blues,yellows, and greens in his palette went some way to create a color harmony and to fix a cool or a warm overall tone to each painting.

Sargent mixed lighter colors such as flesh tones by adding to lead white, vermilion, and a selection of other pigments including bone black, on occasion rose madder, and even green viridian. Mixing them together roughly on the palette, he then worked them into and onto adjacent brushstrokes on the canvas to give more subtle variations in tone.

(Jacqueline Ridge and Joyce Townsend; "How Sargent Made it Look Easy"; American Artist magazine; August, 1999, page 29)