The Artist_s Magazine 2016-03__

March 2016 39

watch on a laptop (selections gravitated toward

Disney movies). Solveig is an avid reader, so

her nose was consistently in a book. Jarno, an

active, athletic boy of 8, found keeping still

diicult.Hewas,frankly,thehardesttopaint.

I’ve learned that, when painting a family por-

trait,havingbothaparentandachildpresent

is good. Mom or dad can encourage a restless

child,butifthechildgetstooboredortired,I

can paint the parent, who has more patience.

An ideal painting session would last three

hours, but sometimes, due to schedule conlicts

or fatigue, we could work only two hours.

Solveig and Yael: Working With Pairs

With the igures placed, I could move to higher

levels of specii city. I did not need everybody

present at every sitting, but having at least two

members of the family posing together helped

me gauge their relative positions and colors.

I decided to focus on Solveig and Yael i rst.

I continued to paint aggressively.

Working with a palette knife, I would apply a

signii cant amount of paint during each day’s

work. A knife is good for establishing a crude,

blocky shape at an abstract level. I some-

times add a little wax medium, which keeps

the paint stif and, along with the Cremnitz

white, accelerates drying. Once I had applied

paint with a knife, I might form it further

with a soft brush loaded with a little more

paint and medium. (I make my own medium

mixture,usingtwopartsstandoil,twoparts

damar varnish and one part Venice turpentine.

SometimesI’lladdalittleWinsor&Newton

Fine Detail Liquin.)

Solveig chose to wear a bright pink leece

pullover. I captured its shape by using sig-

niicant amounts of a pink mixed from cad-

miumredlightandalizarincrimson,pushing

against and into the green of the stufed chair.

Ineededtodevelopthepositionandform

of the chair so that I could locate Solveig ( 6 ).

Sometimes I continued to work on the chair

after Solveig and Yael had left.

I found myself working back and forth

from Solveig to Yael, so Yael’s igure and head

acquired a little more substance during these

sessions as well ( 7 ).

Chromatics of Hair

h e entire family has beautiful and uncanny

blond hair. Glenn’s hair is a rusty blond that

has some spring to it. Yael’s hair is a truer light

blond. Solveig and Jarno take after their mother,

but their hair is white blond with a i neness only

found in the hair of children. h at white blond

was a challenging color to work with, but I

found that yellow ochre and raw sienna cut with

white and boosted occasionally with touches

of cadmium lemon, or sometimes reduced in

intensity with touches of violet, did the job. I

held the brightest and lightest spots of color in

reserve for very small areas.

56

ABOVE LEFT: 5.

(February 23)

End of fi rst sitting

with large can-

vas; comparative

measurement marks

(digitally enhanced

for visibility) on the

left

ABOVE RIGHT: 6.

(March 18) Shap-

ing of the pink shirt

(Solveig’s) and form-

ing of the green

chair