Painting in layers with discrete stages (as seen above) is a powerful means to create realistic and expressive artwork. In this post I describe an example of the process with still life, although the methods are appropriate for any subject matter.

Stage 1) A simple underdrawing, black ink on a white gessoed panel.

The black ink in the drawing above has a high contrast against the ground. Is this a good way to start what I hope will be a subtle still life? In fact it is, because I am going to use a layered technique. The high contrast of this image introduces an important theme in layered painting: make something strong contrast, then paint over it to make more subtle contrast. [On the panel, the bowl is five and a half inches wide (i.e., 14 cm).]

Stage 2) Underpainting in oil over the drawing.

The underpainting above is thin, direct and colorful, working out the basic forms without worrying too much about details in one painting session. Though the painting is thin, the drawing is now barely visible. If I had not used dark ink in the drawing, it would have been hidden by even a thin layer of paint; by using dark ink, I could still see the drawn details as I painted over the drawing. Before painting, the first thing I did was to mix the colors on my palette, where I could find a good color harmony.

In underpainting, I generally aim for warmer colors than I want in the finished work. I also added a little extra linseed oil to the colors so that they were a bit more fluid than straight tube colors. I generally paint without turpentine.

Look at how I apply the paint in the background in the underpainting stage above. It looks very streaky, doesn’t it? This is another example of making something high [or medium] contrast so that, after being covered by another layer or two, it will take on more subtle contrast. This streaky background pattern will later add a bit of texture to the painting, but it won’t jump out as it does now. Paintings that have smooth, perfectly blended surfaces tend to lack breath, they become suffocating and hard.

Stage 3) Overpainting, where I make the contrast stronger again, with attention to strong lights and darks.

Obviously, the underpainting (Stage 2) was dry before I painted over it. For the Stage 3, I use a bit of thickened linseed oil to make the paint more rich and rounded. I painted over the entire painting in one session, but quite thinly. The only thick parts are the highlights.

I’m accomplishing different things in Stage 3. On the one hand, I’m toning down some of the contrasts from Stage 2 (look at those streaks in the background, which can be seen in close-up in this post). But I also create some contrasts that are much stronger than I ultimately want to have (for example, the highlights on the fruit). The bowl and background are mostly finished at this stage.

Stage 4) Finishing touches.

In Stage 4 I finished the painting with a final overpainting. I painted sparingly, but the results were dramatic. On the lights of the mandarins, I put on a very thin layer of orange to mute the overly bright highlights from Stage 3 and unify the forms. I played with the leaves a bit, and I worked on the front side of the table. I made subtle changes elsewhere as well, for example toning down the light on the left side of the bowl. Finishing a painting takes time, but most of the time is spent just looking and thinking. The actually brushwork in Stage 4 was probably no more than five minutes.

People interested in art generally think that traditional oil painting involves many layers of transparent colored glazes. This isn’t quite accurate. Yes, layering is involved, but rarely did artists of the past need to make many more layers than I use here. Also, much of layered painting involves painting translucently rather than transparently. I use transparent colors for the dark colorful shadows. But in many places, I use opaque colors (e.g., mixtures containing white) that are nonetheless translucent because I paint thinly. A bit of opaque color will prevent a transparent glaze from having too hard and glassy effect. Painting with only transparent colors in oil gives an unpleasant effect, I think.

Could I have done this painting with acrylics instead of oils? Perhaps, but I think it would have been more difficult. In another post I discuss the differences between the two types of paints with respect to painting in layers.

Prinsengracht 100
1015 DZ Amsterdam

Majolica Bowl with Cherries, oil on panel (detail)
click here to enlarge

12 maart – 30 april 2009

Open: wo. t/m zat. 12.00-18.00
T.       + 31 20 66 54 485

by Karl Zipser, oil on linen, 2004

Carina Fernhout painted this larger-than-life meta self-portrait as Eve; to the right is Adam, to the left, her daughter.

KARL: Who does the Adam figure represent in your painting?

CARINA: Yes, what a difficult question! Maybe all the men I know, or all the men I want to know.

KARL: The Adam is really a meta-portrait of men?

CARINA: Yes, whatever that means.

KARL: Why are the figures so big?

CARINA: It wasn’t at first the intention, but when they are so large I can “feel” them while painting, almost like sculpting them; the canvas felt as though it were their skin. I just wanted them to be life sized, but they came out even bigger.

KARL: When you have a large painting like this, how does it interact with the environment where it is?
CARINA: Well, it takes up a lot of space, as a painting. It influences me, certainly. It took me three months to paint. When I make something big, I move a lot more, walk back and forth from the painting, and have a lot more exercise. I love to paint with a BIG BRUSH. It’s not always practical, but large is what I find the satisfying.

KARL: What is the effect of such a big painting to look at, once it is made?

CARINA: You can feel as if you are in the same landscape as the people on the canvas. When I see people in front of the painting, it as if they enter that world.

KARL: Here [below] you are with another self-portrait.

CARINA: At first I was inspired by the color white. I wanted to paint a woman like an Islamic woman with a white headscarf, but in the end it looked more like a bride in the Western tradition. I made a self-portrait because I was a little sad and a little serious. What I found nice to paint were these orchids behind her and running through her.

KARL: It is a very soft picture, and yet there is an intense gaze of you looking out.

CARINA: I don’t know why it is like that, but it says a lot about her feelings.

KARL: Is this painting about a longing you have to be a bride, or is it closer to the self-wedding of Jennifer Hoes?

CARINA: It has to do with a promise to myself.

KARL: What is the promise?

CARINA: To be honest to myself.

KARL: Is Jennifer Hoes causing all the women of Haarlem to marry themselves?

CARINA: [Laughs] I knew about her wedding. I’m sure it influenced me in an unconscious way. That is the good thing about Haarlem, there is a lot of inspiration in the air.

KARL: Please tell me about this double portrait.

CARINA: This is a portrait commission, also larger than life, of my neighbor and his daughter who are originally from West Africa. I chose to paint the portrait so large, and with thin layers, transparent, because it fascinated me so much — making it larger than life made it more real.

KARL: I see an intensity of gaze again in this picture, but the feeling is very different from the wedding self-portrait above.

CARINA: There is not a clear line between the father and daughter, they are so close together, there is an intimacy, whereas the self-portrait has a feeling of isolation. In the big Adam and Eve picture, these is intimacy in the way Adam’s arm is against Eve’s, but that is the only indication of intimacy or affection that you see. I felt that Adam and Eve should stand apart because there is a lot that they don’t understand about one another. With the father, a single parent, and daughter it is different, there is a much stronger bond.

KARL: How does this compare to your bond with your daughter?

CARINA: People often ask if the wedding self-portrait is of my daughter. I think that I identify very closely with my her, and she with me. But she is at an age where she doesn’t like that, where she wants to break free.

This is what I call my “Queens day” picture. It is of a very old cup that was given out when a Dutch princess was born, and of a pastry desert that you can only buy on the queen’s birthday. I wanted to do something with this very old cup and this thing you can eat on this special day because I found it such a challenging combination. Also, a painting in which the color orange is the head character is a challenge because it is not an easy color to paint with, and maybe not an easy color to look at. The House of Orange is the Dutch royal family.

This picture is not about primary colors, I think.

There are more interesting painting challenges in this picture. For example, mother of pearl in the handle of the spoon and fork. Here is a 640 KB version of the image if you would like to take a closer look.

What do you think about the composition? Could it be improved by cropping, or is it about right?

Red gauche on paper

Let’s for a moment accept the proposition that children artists can be considered “real artists.” What an odd type of artist a child makes, if you think about it. What a short career a child has as an artist, always in transition. Who could be worse at writing an artist’s statement than a child?

Please look at the painting above and ask yourself, what does it depict? I have looked at this artwork many times and I always have had more or less the same interpretation of the content. But what was the artist’s intention? Are our views similar? Why don’t I ask the artist? In fact, I am the artist. I painted this sometime during the early 1970′s, but I have no memory of doing so. I have no idea what I intended. I somehow doubt that my interpretation of the picture (which I remember from later in my childhood) is in fact what I was thinking when I painted it.

The painting is framed behind glass, which makes it difficult to photograph. My mother made frames for many of my sister’s and my artworks, without which they would certainly have been lost. Children’s art was the main artwork in our house when I was growing up. If it were not for this early encouragement, I probably would not have become an artist.

Do you frame your children’s art? Do you ever think of the long-term implications of doing so (or not doing so)?

[Update]
I enjoyed reading the different interpretations of this painting by Sunil, Steve, Rex, Leslie, June, and Birgit. I never had the idea of a giant figure on the right before, but Sunil’s comment made me look at the picture in a different way. An area of agreement is that the picture shows a man. I would really like to know what I thought I was doing when I made this.

I’ve been thinking about this picture a lot, about the role of the “artist.” Here is what I think: my mother’s role in this picture was something like that of a photographer. She didn’t “make” the image by hand, but she created the conditions for it to be made. Presumably it was one of many paintings. She selected this one, framed it and saved it. I think she chose this image for a reason, because it is a compelling. She could also have made a compelling photograph of a pattern of clouds in the sky that looked a lot like a man on a dock or a boat, or what have you. I think my role as a three or four year old painter is completely accidental.

Is children’s art art? It seems to me that it can be, but a parent or some adult has an important role to play in making it art — selecting what is good and presenting it as art.

[UPDATE 2]

Who is the most influential art blogger? Ed Winkleman, of course. I haven’t been following his blog as closely as I would like to, but yesterday I took a look and the title of his recent post Art About Art got me excited. I’ve been working on an essay about this general subject “art about art”, and I wondered if I had been scooped. In fact, there was no connection; Winkleman’s post could have been titled “Art about making art,” how artwork depicting artists “caught in the act” of creation tells us about how artists did what they did. In my own experience this is a fruitful avenue for research, because there is much to be learned about studio practice from old paintings, (how to store brushes in linseed oil, for example, or how the palette was laid out in the 15th century). There is also much to learn from ancient art about the making, painting, and firing of ancient Greek ceramics.

Back to art about art — the concept of depicting art in art opens a lot of possibilities. The imaginary vase painting still life above is an example. I have long been fascinated by Athenian vase painting because of the potential of the vase to act as a “frame” for drawings and paintings on the vase itself. This fascination led me to a long love affair with ceramics and kiln building — that’s for another time though. The painting above is a technical study in how to paint a representation of a vase with oil colors on canvas. The form of the vase is based on studies of a stamnos in a museum in nearby Leiden, while the “red figure painting” is based on a painting on an amphora in the same museum. I studied these ancient objects by drawing in my sketchbook at the museum, then created this fantasy synthesis in my studio.

In fact, I worked out the rough form of the vase together with Hanneke van Oosterhout in a large painting we did together. I made this study to develop the technique for painting the vase before overpainting it in the large painting.

Every blog post should end with a question, right? Okay then, what do you think about Ed Winkleman’s blog? Or, what do you think about “art about art”? Or, what do you think of collaborating on artwork?

…

related post: Art about art and doing a 180

Here is what Cennino Cennini wrote (probably in the 14th century):

. . . have a plate of tin or lead which is one finger deep all around, like a lamp; and keep it half full of oil, and keep your brushes in it when idle, so that they will not dry up.

In Cennino Cennini’s time, artists did not use organic solvents for oil painting. To keep their oil painting brushes from drying up, they stored them in linseed oil. A slight improvement on Cennini’s method is to have the hair of the brush in oil, while the handle remains oil free.

The advantage of storing brushes in linseed oil is that it is easier and faster to clean them. The painter does not need to remove the oil, only the pigment.

How do you clean your brushes?

We have had much discussion about painting from photographs (e.g. here, here and here). What about painting on photographs? Artist Erika Meershoek and photographer Dennis Moet of Haarlem have teamed up to do just this. Their work is a powerful synthesis of the two media, which, beyond its visual impact, turns the photography versus painting discussion on its head.

Everyone knows about Photoshop and its power to manipulate images. What painters realize, however, is that the tools in Photoshop are impoverished compared to what an artist can do with real paint. Why digitally manipulate a photograph, when you can paint on it directly?

The answer is that when painting directly on a photograph, you arrive at something which is neither a photograph nor a painting, but a conceptual and physical blend of the two. A traditional photographer or painter might not feel comfortable with this new form. But looking at the great results (and presumably fun) that Erika and Dennis are getting, I find myself asking, why don’t I do this also?

Of course, beyond getting over the intellectual barriers of thinking of photography and painting as separate art forms, there is the issue of how to do it well. Erika and Dennis each bring special talents to the work. It would be a mistake to assume that one could casually achieve such powerful results.

Painting on photographs has a long history and is enjoying popularity now as well. Erika and Dennis would never claim to have invented this technique. Their contribution is in pushing it to a new level.

What do you say, photographers and painters? Should we collaborate, or stick with our traditional media?

Artist and writer Jannie Regnerus has collected three paintings by my partner, Hanneke van Oosterhout. I went to Jannie’s house today to make a photograph of one of the paintings and to see if there was any chance that she would consider reselling them.

KARL ZIPSER: What do you think about these paintings you bought?

JANNIE REGNERUS: I like the intimacy of the painted objects. They have been cut off from their former lives as useful or functional things — especially the ginger pot. The ginger pot whispers its own history and has its own universe. The pears have a different feeling, they are sensual, almost like human bodies. And the strawberries have some humor because the proportions are confusing, the giant berries in the tiny cup.

KARL ZIPSER: Don’t you find these pictures a bit too dark?

JANNIE REGNERUS: I like the way the objects sink within this black background. They are very silent, but also very strong. I like these better than the paintings with the light background. Hanneke is very good in this dark and intimate night atmosphere. l like the tempered light, the sun has set, this is the best time for objects, they become more mysterious than they are in the broad daylight.

KARL ZIPSER: Would you sell these paintings? Perhaps you could buy something different, like a new stereo system?

JANNIE REGNERUS: Of course not. I bought them because I love them. I saw them and I wanted to have them close by. I didn’t buy them as an investment. When people come to my house they also want them. Hanneke made one picture for friends of mine who saw her work here. Every time I visit Hanneke’s studio I see new things, so it is very difficult for me to go there.

KARL ZIPSER: But you don’t like everything she makes.

JANNIE REGNERUS: Sometimes she works too long on a painting and I think that I liked it better at an earlier state. That is normal, it happens to me, I think it happens to every artist sometimes.

KARL ZIPSER: I agree, working too far is often a danger.

JANNIE REGNERUS: So Karl, what will be the prices of Hanneke’s paintings in the exhibition that begins this Friday?

KARL ZIPSER: That is an interesting question.
. . .

Hanneke’s show opens 15 December in Haarlem at gallery De Provenier (which does not have its own website). What will be the prices? Which pictures will she select for the exhibition? Will she, should she, sell on-line as well? All of these questions are unresolved. Hanneke will discuss the progress of the show on her own site.