Some days ago, I met a friend for a mutual portrait session. My portrait of Claudia was done in charcoal. It was rather sketchy but I found it captured a characteristic expression in her face. While I was drawing, I was fascinated by the light contour resulting from her sitting against the light source, so actually I would have preferred to use charcoal in a more painterly way and draw a dark face with light contours against a light background. But somehow, I didn’t dare to do this, probably out of fear of the unknown and a feeling of not having enough time for working on the drawing until I was satisfied.
But the idea stayed in my mind and some days later, I decided to make an attempt to draw what had fascinated me, this time out of memory. I had bought a new pastel medium which are colours in little pots, rather than sticks. The tones are beautifully broken, and I had selected them with the idea of this portrait in mind: a dark ocre (yellowish), Payne’s grey (blueish), a burnt dark brown tone (reddish), plus pale yellow and light grey for lights, and a deep cold brown tone for intense darks. I thought that I could mix a violet tone from the reddish + blueish pot, and a greenish tone from blueish and yellow pot.
Choosing this palette was something new because earlier I had always chosen the clean base colours (yellow, magenta, cyan) out of the theoretical knowledge that all other colours can be obtained by mixing. The selection I made here is a different approach, one which begins with broken colours, so any mix will be even more broken. I’m quite curious what I will be able to make out of these colours. They are a new development on the art materials market and I wasn’t sure whether I was sort of a ‘fashion victim’ or whether they permit serious artwork. It’s quite obviously a very commercial product, the vendor selling specialized equipment like palette knives and applicators and sponges. But the pots had a very feminine appeal, they look like cosmetics and I had an instinctive desire of using them with the finger like I would be using eye shadow.
I approached the drawing with a pencil sketch of the original drawing, and then used my finger to apply some of the sheet of paper. I did not like the result, it felt too creamy and didn’t cover much area. I then tried one of the supplied sponges to apply some dark ocre on the sheet of paper. This looked very artificial, a broad stroke over the cheek which I couldn’t dissolve because the pigmet stuck to the paper. I decided to continue with the sponge, firstly lightly applying the colour, than intensifying. I also used tissue paper because this was less sticky on the paper surface.
I continued the drawing to just try and visualize the idea I had – a dark face against a lighter background, and the light contours. There’s practically no resemblance to the original portrait nor to my friend. The drawing was a first attempt with these materials and I was disappointed because it didn’t work as expected.
My conclusions are in two directions: I will stick to the idea of the dark face with light contours and see whether I can do another portrait session, but choose a different medium. For the medium of pastel pots, I didn’t like the sponges nor was I very comfortable with using paper tissues or my finger tips. But I thought using brushes might work better, and I would also like to try out other instruments for distributing pigment on paper which permit a more sketchy approach and layered building up of intensely coloured areas. Maybe it works better with normal household sponges which are less sticky on the paper surface. I would also like to try out paper with rougher surface, like heavy pastel paper or watercolour paper. And finally, I would like to try out mixed media. The colours I chose are really beautiful and I think there’s much potential in this medium – but requires some search and experimenting to find out how to bring it out.
Another portrait session
About a week or two later, I met another friend for a portrait session. The first portrait of Jean-Marc was done with charcoal, and I felt it was the same sketchy approach as in the earlier portrait of Claudia. I wasn’t too satisfied because resemblance is limited and there was again this sort of hurdle I wasn’t able to get over. I would have liked to use charcoal in a more painterly fashion.
For the second portrait, I used pencil, and am much more satisfied. There’s some real resemblance. For the future, I might try to employ a more constructionist approach by first outlining the basic elements of the head and face, before working out the details.
