Portrait Painting Thibault

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I heard again recently painter Michael John Angel's lecture on the artist he knew, Pietro Annigoni here in Firenze, Italia. I like many of Annigoni’s works, mostly his portraits, but also his drawings after Firenze was bombed during World War II. I like the way he mixed media in his work in a very contemporary way. In fact, John Angel related that he once saw Annigoni paint with a brick!

But what I enjoy best about seeing his portraits is being reminded that a good design trumps a photographic likeness every time. On Monday, I started to paint a portrait of a young artist I know named Thibault (pronounced “T-bow). He is a good-looking French boy with dreadlocks and wears cool clothes.

Anyway, Mondays are typically my lesson exchange night: I teach anatomy to an Italian artist friend and he teaches me how to speak and understand Italian. On that night I was also making him dinner so that he could taste the new oil I had received from our weekend of olive picking in the Tuscan countryside. This is the Kelly length of telling you that I only had one-hour of a typically two-hour session with the model. So, I hope to improve upon this with more time. The third image is a close-up of the second image.

Classical Art Klimt Leopold Museum

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

While the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria, brags about holding an extensive collection of Austrian Expressionism artworks by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, among other Austrian artists, I was surprised by the works I saw there.

For the last three years, I have been studying more seriously, or at least with a more rigid schedule or focus, classical art. At my age, I thought I did not want to take time out for this, but ultimately I realized that I was not improving on the former path that I was on and I needed to slow down and learn what I missed years ago.

For this reason, I was thrilled to know that Gustav Klimt, so famous for a looser, more illustrator style, could produce really beautiful, painterly works in a classical style. Check out these two portrait paintings of an old man. They have the same title, which was translated in different ways. “Der Blinde” was called “The Blind Man” for one painting. The other, on the other end of the same wall, was translated to “Portrait of an Old Man.” They both look tight from a respectable distance, but up close, the strokes are minimally wonderful.



This portrait of a little girl is the size of a normal postcard (6 x 4”). Look how tight this is compared to the style that Gustav Klimt became known for, Austrian Expressionism. He definitely could draw! And once he knew he had those skills, then he knew that his hand, eye, and brain were all on the same page and he could begin intelligent exploration.
More tomorrow . . .


And I leave you with an image I took outside of the Parliament building in Vienna. There are more, but I will spare you. And I hope you like the “Eye Tree” I do not know the real name of this tree, but I liked it a lot. It reminded me of childhood scary stories in which the woods were always watching. Trees truly are magical. Note the “art nouveau” type patterning in the leaves between the “V” and the funky face in the lower right -- Nature aids art.

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Drawing Portrait of Anthony

As I may have mentioned before, I feel weak in the area of portraiture and want to improve this. Several of my artists friends and I model for each other to help us in our drawing of faces. Anthony (pronounced “Ant – ton- ee”) was the latest sitter. Here you will see my finished drawing in charcoal, as well as steps in the process.



It should be apparent that after my initial drawing on the Roma paper, my shapes are wrong. I try to correct them in the outline stage because it is much easier to move a line than an area of tone. But once I have my tonal drawing, my errors become more evident.
In this case, I felt that I had a decent likeness in line, but once I filled in the shapes with carboncino, I lost something. But redrawing is an intellectual pleasure!

I hope you enjoy this portrait. This one took me about 6 hours to accomplish, for those interested in such things. Of course, this does not take into account how much training I have been doing to be able to create a drawing! One foot in front of the other . . .

Pencil Portrait Sketch of Harry

My recent attempt at portraiture is this small sketch of my friend Harry. I am working on basic drawing paper of a light yellow crème color and sketching with a pencil. He has such a great face, especially for sculpture. And while he is being a sport about this – holds very still!!! -- I am not sure he would want to pose for 3-d art. Next Monday evening, I will try to refine this drawing.

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