This will be up into the first week of October.

Small Show at the Black Bird Kitchen

Friday September 9, 2011    140 E Main  Bozeman, MT  @ 5pm

Copper Plate Etching

Oil Painting

Charcoal

Pen and Ink

Here is another copy I made using a three color pallet for the first oil paint layer.   I think this is a great way to simplify the first step and maintain the ability to create a complete envelope to build on if needed.  Blockx paint:  Vine Black, Flake White, Mixed Red, and Yellow Ochre… all mixed with a putty made with chalk, egg, and hand refined oils.   The ‘first’ layer is egg tempera, mixed with a warm yellow pigment,  which you can see a lot of showing through the first oil paint layer… the top image here.  With these copies I am trying to paint as quickly as possible… first layer is about 4 hours work,  the second is two days each about four hours for a 16 hour total.

The second oil paint layer is basically the same colors with the additions of a cool and opaque yellow,and Colbalt blue.  Very interesting throughout the work to try and understand how he used warm and cool alongside transparent and opaque paint.

Hand made, by myself and my father, traditional Sack-back Windsor Chair.  Painted with milk paint and finished with tung oil.

Below are images of a copy I made of the painting, ‘Portrait of a Boy’ by Rembrandt.  I love this painting for a lot of reasons but here I wanted to try two things that I think might have been his process of working on this painting and which are not mine.  First being that I think he worked here on a colored ground which was left remarkably alone and can be seen as the shirt and within a lot of the shadows in the flesh and hair.  The second being that he finished the painting very quickly (HA! laughing all to directly at myself), perhaps just one sitting, yet with what seems like astonishingly minimal work I think he created a very finished and effective portrait in both a realistic and interpretive/artistic painting.  All the decisions  I made and followed are based on an effort to follow this painting/method a close as possible

I should add that I am making comparisons and thoughts relative to the image that I have in the book, REMBRANDT The Painter at Work by Ernst Van De Wetering, not the original unfortunately.

Layer 1.

Image on the left is taken after about 15 minutes of very fast work over the brown (vine black and venetian red) ground which is what you are seeing as the shirt.  Just trying as quickly as possible to see if I am going in the ‘right’ direction.

Image to the right is as far as I got with the first layer.  I had wanted to leave the shirt alone more than I did.  Also wish that I had made a larger painting.  Found it difficult to make the paint build up how the paint wanted to and keep the detail that I wanted.  Painting is about 9×11 inches.

Layer 2.  Finished

A detail of the texture and brush work in the face.  The colored ground makes appearances more or less in many places, notably the shadows for the eyes, nose and mouth as well as coming forward as the darkest hair just above the middle of the forehead.

Eric Alley