Incorporating ground

 I can't believe I haven't made any art for more than two weeks, but...it's been a rather fraught 18 days, and between other responsibilities, health issues, and a darkling mood, well, it just didn't happen. I did start this project more than a week ago, but it required several steps with lengthy drying times in between, and I stalled out before making it past the first few.

This is a study utilizing a ground color (i.e., the background color) as an integral part of the painting, an interesting and unusual lesson from Let's Face It 2022 with Florence Lee, a creative and meticulous artist with a charmingly tiny voice who is truly beguiling (if methodically slow) in her process. So the first step was to get a birch board (I had ordered some and had them on hand, they are 11x14 and about 3/16th of an inch thick), coat it with clear gesso on both sides (doing the back as well prevents warping), and letting that dry; then we mixed up a ground color (a medium to dark blue made up of about five mixed colors), painted the entire board (being sure we mixed enough color to have some left over to use later), and let that dry.

I ended up correcting both the mouth
location and the jawline after this photo,
and also took out some of the shading.

Next, we sectioned off the board with a grid (using light charcoal) and did the same with our reference photo, to make it easier to reproduce the face on the board. I don't usually do this, since I have become increasingly accurate in my drawing, but since this face was larger than life, I decided to do so and it did make features much easier to locate in place. Then it was time to make the drawing, which was supposed to be mostly a basic line drawing using a dark charcoal. I went overboard with the shading, and had to use my ground color to remove some of it after.

As you can see, there is much smudging
to cover up with ground.

After the drawing was made, we took the board outdoors for ventilation, and sprayed it with either fixative or hairspray, using a finger to smudge in whatever areas we wished to either darken or soften. That had to dry, and then we had to fix the fix, so to speak, by coating the board once more with a coat of clear gesso.

Once the gesso was dry, the actual painting began. The first step was to study the painting and decide in what areas we wished to revert the image to the original color, taking out smudges both purposeful and inadvertent (somehow you just can't draw with charcoal without dragging your hand through it at some point). The next step was to mix some darks and paint in the most dramatic shadows and darker areas of the face. Then we went the opposite direction and put in the lightest lights, followed by all the medium tones, and once again correcting anything that didn't "fit" by either mixing in some ground color with it, or flat-out painting it back to the blue.

This was a really interesting, if time-consuming, process, and I like the resulting painting. Rather than using the reference photo provided, I decided to paint Mexican artist, poet, and model Carmen Mondragón (also known as Nahui Olin); you can see why she was in such demand as a model, with her sultry eyes and rather pouty expression. I painted her once before, but using a completely different palette of bright watercolors and incorporating wide eyes, a tinier mouth, and a cartoonish cat that mimicked her own painting style. I feel like I have made great progress in achieving likenesses in my portraits since then (a little more than a year ago). This was made a little more challenging because the photo was black and white, so I had to decide on the colors without reference, knowing only that her eyes were green, and that her hair varied between blonde, red, and brunette!

I will probably try this method again—Flo stood for part of her lesson in front of a wall of paintings she had done in this manner, using various color grounds along with a variety of darker or lighter faces, and they are all beautiful and so different—I especially love the splash of highlights on the dark ground. It has a lot of potential and is inspiring as well, although a lot slower work than I usually enjoy.

"Carmen M."—gesso, acrylics, and charcoal on birch board, 11x14 inches.