For my second painting class, my professor was able to gain permission from the Phoenix Museum of Art to study and copy several paintings in their collection. This was a rather unprecedented occasion. While the Phoenix Art Museum does allow people to come in and sketch sculptures and paintings in their collection (with pencil only), they have never allowed anyone to copy paintings with oil paint onsite. I was very excited about this wonderful opportunity. However, understandably since the museum had never done anything like this before, they were extremely wary and nervous about the whole thing. They had about 5 different sheets of waivers and rules that we had to sign before participating. We had to keep these papers with us at all times. Also, we didn’t have many times to copy from the paintings directly. We really only had enough time in the semester to meet and paint at the museum about 3 class sessions (3 hours in length). Our class was the guinea pig of the university. If all went well, then the Museum said that they would consider doing this more often with the School in the future.
Now on to the rules and the way this worked: The museum prepared a list of about 20 paintings from which we would have to choose 5 to copy. Since there were about 15 students in my class, we would have to also divide up ourselves amongst the paintings because you couldn’t have 10 people clustered around and copying one painting. So we got the list of 20 paintings, looked at each one and then voted for our favorites. There were several things to consider while we looked at the paintings: how detailed they were, what technique had been used, how big our copy was going to be and if we wanted to copy a detail of the painting or the whole thing. The museum required in their stipulations that we were only allowed to use water-soluble oil paint (which I and most of us had never used before) and we would have to copy the paintings in an area away from the rest of the museum. Not only that, but we were not allowed to wash our brushes onsite. Instead we would have to take them back to school in a Ziploc and wash them there. The Museum gave us pitchers of water and our containers had to be mostly closed, like those cups that children use when they fingerpaint. (They have a tiny opening and a lid)
Walking around, I found some paintings that I liked, but seemed rather detailed and while I could have attempted to copy them, they would have taken a lot of work and more time than I had. In the end, a few friends and I gravitated towards a portrait by John Singer Sargent. It was only a portrait of a businessman, but I like painting people, and the composition was simple. We voted, and the Sargent made it to the final five.
I first started experimenting with the paints. Watersoluble oils are rather new and untested. We got the Windsor Newton paints which apparently are not even one of the better water-sol paints on the market right now. I’ve been told that they are subpar to traditional oils but I tested them with an open mind. Our teacher gave us some medium to use as well, but when I opened it and smelled it I decided not to use the stuff because it had a very strong odor of rotting fish! Not fun. In fact, the paints themselves smelled the same way but not as strong. The paint consistency reminded me of some sort of gauche. It’s hard to describe the way it moves….kind of greasy, maybe. On the internet just about everyone says to wash your brushes with turp like normal to clean your brushes, but honestly, I found the best results to getting my brushes clean were with water. It really wasn’t hard for me to get used to the paints and pick up on them after a while because I started to treat them like acrylics. I learned to paint with acrylics before oil, so I’m still quite used to using them. So honestly….I’m going to say what most people probably don’t want to hear: Watersoluble oils really aren’t that bad at all. In fact, I found them to be extremely useful and versatile. They were like oils in that they were flexible- you could smear them around…they wouldn’t dry for a while and then coupled with the benefit of only needing water to clean them, they had the added benefits of acrylic. It’s no wonder people use these paints when they travel, they are so easy to use in situations where you have limited access to all your oil painting supplies!
A lot of people out there say that they take forever to dry. I didn’t really find this to be true. In fact, they seemed to dry a lot more quickly than my regular oils- but remember I wasn’t using medium, just water.
After playing around with the paints, we got to work doing small studies before jumping to the full portrait.
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| A sketch of the portrait done at the museum. |
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| An unfinished value study. |
The picture that I had been given to copy from when we weren’t at the museum was really helpful. However, when I got to the museum it was like night and day. The picture I had was very yellow and green and the portrait in real life had far more color than was in the photo. The first day that we gathered at the museum, they had hung the paintings in the foyer of the museum and it was terrible lighting. The foyer was dark and they had construction going on near us and the loud sounds echoed throughout the building. I wished that I had more time to paint from the real life thing. There was so much more helpful information that I could see in person in the painting and I could see his technique way more easily. Let me tell you, there is no way a photograph can substitute for the real thing!
The second and third time we went to the museum they had set up the paintings in a conference room. The light was much better and there were no annoying loud sounds. We worked hastily and every now and then were able to come up and take a look at it closely. It was hard on the days that we weren’t at the museum to do it. Since I’m a slow painter, I would often get more done on my own time than in the museum. I was constantly distracted and the nervousness of the museum staff didn’t help me either. They were all nice though, but watched us like hawks. The museum was also worried about copies and of course while there is probably no way any of our paintings will be confused for a real Sargent painting, the museum still would not allow us to paint on a canvas the same size as the original and we had to put a sticker on the back of our paintings saying it was indeed a copy done at the museum. I kind of like the sticker, though…it makes it seem official! =)
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| My classmates getting to work! |
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| I'm on the far right. |
So you can see the various stages here of my work. Some done in the college studios and some at the museum. I learned quite a bit about the different kinds of blacks in this assignment. I learned that lamp black is not a good choice for painting a dark black-blue suit, but Ivory black does the trick! I progressed along pretty well until I made some last minute changes to the color on his cheek and forehead before the end of semester critique.
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| Work being done in the painting studios. |
As always, work accumulates at the end of the semester and I wasn’t able to finish the portrait entirely. It was good enough to get through crit but it remains unfinished. This summer I hope to revisit it though. It bothers me to leave a painting with so much potential unfinished.
One more word on the watersoluble paints. They are a lot more sticky when they dry than regular oils. I’m sure once they are varnished then you won’t feel it anymore, but just an FYI, they can probably accumulate dust on them easily. After this assignment my teacher divided up the watersoluble paints that we used as a class amongst us. I got a bunch of tubes, so I plan on purchasing some more and using these again in the future. I think I’d probably have another set of brushes solely devoted to watersoluble oils, because I think that they are a bit harder on brushes and just so different that I wouldn’t want to interchange them.
To be continued…
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