It all started with the want of a Mahl stick

 I have been using a shaky old table top easel. As if that wasn't bad enough it wasn't too stable and prone to tip over if you weren't careful. I eventually clamped it to the old shop table I was using. In place of a Mahl stick I would stand a can of spray paint in front of the canvas and rest my arm on that. I figured what was the point of getting a Mahl stick of the easel couldn't support it. I looked at easels online and didn't like what I saw for the money. I decided to build my own. It had to be collapsible, mobile, fit through a standard 28 inch interior doorway, fully adjustable and provide support the full way across the top canvass holder. Most easels just give you a short cross bar and it provides little support on the outer upper corners. I also wanted some kind of Mahl capability and it had to be built to last and solid as a rock. This is what I came up with. 2-5/16" carriage bolts clamp the lower support. For the top, I countersunk a tee nut also 5/16" and made a plug out of teak (also gotten for free) to prevent marring the face of the center support. This applies pressure to a double French cleat similar to what is used to hang wall cabinets. The supports that hold the assembly upright are 1/4" carriage bolts. It will hold a canvass about 65 inches tall. I figure If I have to, I could always make swing out outriggers for more stability if the need arises. My concern was that I wanted it to hold smaller canvases securely.

The best part is this was all made with "rescued" and recycled mahogany and sapelle wood that was all free. If you look close at the feet, you can see it was a mahogany stair tread rejected by the millwork company. The majority of the rest of it was recycled mahogany flooring I got from a friend renovating his house. I even had the wheels from a showroom renovation where I worked a couple of years ago. Total cost was about $35.00 for hardware and glue.

This wood is getting harder and harder to come by and more expensive. It takes such a long time to grow one of these trees it would be a crime to let it go to waste. Just a little wood factoid, it takes about 300 years to grow an ebony tree 1 foot in diameter. Only God can make a tree but it takes the ignorance of man to chop it up and put it in a dumpster.

 

The eyes have it

This is about the closest I can get it for now. I know the eye on the viewers left needs to come up a little and the one on the right needs to get rounded out just a tad. I am not going to make any more changes until I fix the eyebrows. The one on the left is too high to the inside and making it look too pouty. I have yet to fix the nose and mouth. The nose is too long, wide and needs to shift left as does the mouth. Then I can fix the shadowing, color and blending. For my first portrait attempt I am just glad it doesn't have that "just zapped with a cattle prod" look. Hopefully the 2nd face will go faster. Like my my first Karate instructor used to say "the first thousand are the hardest".

My new invention

I call it "stick and rubber band" LOL. Here's a good shot of my "studio" too. It's a table in the garage with a light over it, but there's room for a cup of coffee.

 I have been going somewhat crazy trying to get the eyes just right. I fixed the right eye (viewers left) and am happy with it but the other one was so far off I just took it off with a cotton swab down to the stained canvas.

Horizontal placement is easy with the proportional divider but the vertical placement is a different story. I first used the SWAG method (scientific wild ass guess) of placing the height of the eye pupil with a wash of burnt umber thinned with odorless mineral spirits. I was holding the paint brush and comparing the angle but I just wasn't sure. I felt like I kept losing the proper angle. This is what I did. I took a grease pencil and marked the plane of the eyes on the laminated reference photo. Then I took my camera tripod and secured a stiff straight stick to the pad with a rubber band. Placed the photo and canvas next to each other and set the angle to the line on the reference photo and compared it to the canvas by changing my eye level, not the tripod. I was very close but not perfect. All in all it worked good and it was cheap enough.

Thinking back, I wasn't sure why but the nose always looked too short even though according to the grid it was in the right spot. I know it's too wide but that's another issue (I have plenty of those). The answer was the eyes were just a little too low. It also resulted in a slightly bigger forehead below the hair line. I thought the hair was off but I was wrong. This marks a first for me. I thought I was wrong once before, but I was mistaken! When I was a mechanic I used to say "there's no substitute for experience". This holds true for most things. It's mistakes like this that you (hopefully) learn from and learn to avoid in the future. Some days you learn more than others if you know what I mean. These last two days I learned a boatload. The biggest problems were my grid and reference photo. The grid wasn't even. As the grease pencil point dulled it threw off the spacing. Not much, just enough to give me grief. I switched reference photos for detail around the eyes. The one I have been using is better for color but too dark to see the detail needed to shape the upper lids. After redoing the eyes (yes both, again) here is where I'm at.

Here is a transparent overlay on the painting. The reference is the transparency. The hats are a little off, but the eyes are almost perfect. To me, it's the eyes that make or break a portrait. If the eyes are wrong you'll never completely capture the expression of the subject.

 Now I just have to fix the nose , the lips and retouch the color here and there. Then I can start on the other face. I may take a break from it though and let what I have done dry to avoid an accidental disaster.
Happy painting!

You're way off!

That's what Rodney Dangerfield said he would hear when he asked for directions. It bears true with my painting. Got a lot done but unfortunately it's in the wrong spot. I couldn't figure out what was wrong so I did a side by side with a grid overlay. I knew the eyes were off but I didn't realize how much, but it's fixable. The lips and the nose need work too. Have a look.

I did this in GIMP. It's a free photo editing software downloadable off the web. if you click on the image and then right click and hit view image it will be clear how bad I was off. Oh well, live and learn.

That wasn't easy

For a minute or two I thought I might have a promising career in Gorilla and Pig portraits. Painting a nose is not the easiest thing I've ever tried. In fact I'm finding it very tricky. I wiped it off twice and partially a third time and I'm still not happy with it but I think it is workable from here. I'm used to the Bob Ross method where you could drop in a happy tree anywhere you want. Let me tell you, it doesn't work that way with nostrils! Or anything else in portrait painting. But I still enjoy the challenge. Here's where I'm at.

Free Portrait Video Learning Series

I just watched a great video series by realism artist  Duffy Sheridan. His portrait work is superb. The videos are free and definitely worth a watch. Enjoy!

My latest endeavor and first portrait attempt

This is a portrait from a black and white photo that was resurrected by my niece in photoshop. It was slightly colorized and that's the way I want it to look. This is where I am at with this. I am blending as I go as I tend to paint in spurts when time allows and do not want anything to dry before I get to blend it.
This is my reference photo

This is what I've accomplished so far

It's coming along okay. I may have to go in and darken some around the eyes but I will wait until I have the whole thing painted before I start changing anything. If it comes out balanced I may just leave it alone.

Return of the Ballerina

I really butchered this attempt at a painting and wanted to come back to it (for a year now). Whenever I looked at it I kept envisioning an impressionistic touch. I had some leftover paint on my pallet and figured what the heck. I have never attempted anything of an impressionistic style so here goes my experiment. It also marks a first for a painting with a human figure in it.
This is where I left off.

This is where I'm at now.

 I will let it dry for now before attempting to color in the ballerina. That I will try to keep of a realism style. Should be interesting as well as a challenge to say the least.

Finally finished

Started this and stopped it several times over the last year. Many things took place that interrupted this painting. Death in the family and started a new job to name a couple. Just glad it's finally done.

Another link to a talented artist

Another artist I found on twitter. Check out her work. Abstract charcoal and pastel. Very different.

Monique Sevenans