You are being hired because your clients believe you know more than they do. Don't disappoint them. Have your way.

I know you mean this tongue-in-cheek, but let me answer you in a serious mode. It's your job to educate your clients. I keep an entire binder of other painter's work and their prices so that they can place my work in perspective. You have to let your clients know that paintings are not photographs. I actually make mine laugh and raise their hand to say "Paintings are not photographs!"

I spent the first four years of my portrait painting time failing to take control of the process, accepting poor resource material, letting someone else control format, sizing etc... You can avoid this mistake by starting now.

Question on color harmony
 

Thank you, Chris!

I think this is some of the best advice, which supports my theory that good advice doesn't care how much you paid for it.

It is my nature to dig in my heels and wrest control from whoever has it. Still, it's hard to do when you don't know all the pitfalls that must be avoided. I do know to take my own reference. I even recognise when my own reference isn't good enough, and then I arrange to take more, which is my next step.

But all that isn't a lot of use if I don't know what to specify, or how to arrive at certain suggestions.

So your advice begs a question.

If I had one client, I would use the color wheel to arrive at a background color, probably based on the clothing she was wearing, or maybe her hair/skin coloring. But now I have two clints to be in the same picture. They have very different coloration, which reflects in the clothing each wears. He as black hair, and likes to wear blues/blacks. She has dark auburn hair and likes to wear tans.

How does one arrive at a harmonious colors when the subjects are so disparate?

Will

I go into their closets with them. Seriously.

And I suggest guidelines up front: avoid tutlenecks (usually); avoid round-necked solid darks unless broken by a nice neckline or collar; look for fabrics that are soft enough to move with the underlying form; no plaids.

If one of them has strong feeling about what they want to wear, I will try to work around it if:

-it has a good neckline;

-I have the skill to paint it well (this will clearly exclude the organza blouse Princess Diana wore in Nelson Shanks's portrait!!);

-the fabric works well (for example, putting someone in a very starched dress shirt can be problematic, since the fabric moves with a life of its own); and

-I can control the second subject's choice.

Unless there were some underlying desire to paint in a given color harmony, I probably wouldn't make that decision until after I begin posing them, or perhaps during the planning phase before I begin painting. The color harmony you choose will gain its unity from the colors of light and shadow, and the overall painting from its value scheme. I am not sure if I have answered your question, Will; if not, please restate it.

Chris,
You have a masterful way of revealing a truth by denying it. Certainly your style would be different from Shanks', but the only thing standing between you and such a blouse would be your belief in yourself. There is not a doubt that given such an oportunity, you would rise to the challenge. You will hard pressed to convince me otherwise.

For me, on the other hand, every attempt at portriature is a challenge of that same magnitude, which is why I am so thankful for this forum.

You answered my question partially, but only because I probably don't know some stuff you might expect me to know. My problem is that I am self-taught by reading and experimenting. (In fact, my art education is so incomplete I still think that when something is painted, it should be recognisable, a precept mostly ignored by the cubists and other progressive thinkers.)

Anyway, my trouble is I don't have an inherent knack for colors, so I will have to learn some rules, then learn to apply them. Normally, I would use the color wheel and try to discern a suitable color scheme - complimentary, triadic, etc. But to my eye, the clothing of the couple does not come together nicely.

I will post a photo so you can see the colors. ***This is not my reference photo,*** but shows their color quite well. It's lit by only a window on an overcast day and the shadows are filled with a large white reflector.

You said,
Those words leave me feeling I missed the whole class except for the closing statement. Could you elaborate on the statement as one might apply it to this photo (composition aside?)

Hello Will,

Good luck on the portrait. I'd like to see it when it is finished. There are two things that come to mind when looking at it. I believe there can be potential pit falls, so I'd like to mention them. First, your photograph was taken indoors, with artificial lighting. The light was close to the subjects. An outdoor scene that you have sketched will require different lighting. Can you shoot a group of photos at the scene that you'll be painting? Will the commissioners let you paint an indoor scene that will work better with the photo you've chosen?

The other thought I had was one of human emotion in a painting. It is a personal thing with me, so forgive me if it's of no interest to you. I hope it can help though. Smiles must be done very well. If not they can look superficial. Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Ingres are artists that can teach worlds about creating emotion in a painting without going cliche or superficial. On thing common in each is that the models rarely smile. What is more common is a slightly up turned mouth that shows a positive state without pushing the "happiness", for lack of a better word in the portrait. Well, good luck with it. :D

Hi Will,

Looking at the photo sample you provided, the blue shirt is the only thing that looks a bit out of place, and much of this could be the photo itself. You could maintan the feel of the man's shirt by rendering it as a middle-light grayed down green. or even a white, if you choose a background that works with the resultant value patterns created by the high contrast of vest and shirt. Test this out with the value massing thumbnails. Her clothing is nicely neutral.

I like the use of what appears to me to be natural light, and of course, I don't know how closely this may resemble the resource photo you plan to use. However, if you plan to use an interior -shot resource, yet for the painting, place the figures outside, I think you will run into problems. Likewise, if you don't have full figure reference, or a good stand-in model, I wouldn't suggest inventing the remaining 75% of their bodies.

You need to make a decision about the temperature of your light source. Here, it is cool, and your shadows warm. If you keep the hues in shadow relatively warmer than the hues in light, the light will become more believable for your painting. (This would be the reverse with a warm light source.) Temperature unity also has to follow through in the background and everything else in the picture. The same thing holds true for color saturation: colors in shadows are less saturated than colors in light.

With respect to the color harmony, sometimes it helps to look at your resource in grayscale / black & white. You might consider an analogous color harmony here. I've included some info on Hal Reed's Analogous wheel (terrific tool). Here it just happens to have a dominant orange dialed-in, but of course, you can move it to any dominant hue.

You can order Hal's color wheel through http://www.artvideostore.com or call Art Video productions at 1-888-513-2187

Anthony,

Thank you for taking the time to comment.

As it happens, I'll be taking more photos after Christmas. I am hoping this will generate a harmonious reference that does not require a great deal of adjustment or patching together of different images.

On the matter of smiles - it is true that most of the old masters never painted smiles. I'm not sure why, but I agree with the prevailing opinion that it was because:

1) many subjects back then had bad teeth; and

2) most subjects can't easily hold a convincing smile as long as needed to paint it.

But now, we have cameras, and nice teeth, and our subjects like to show them off. The lady I'm working with simply looks much nicer with a smile than without one. She is known for that smile. A portrait of her without it would not really be a very good portrait.

And while smiles are more challenging, they are not impossible by any means. Nor can it be said that the old masters *never* painted them. Bouguereau did. It's clearly visible in his Nymphs & Satyr painting.

So, considering that I have both a camera to capture the moment and a subject with nice teeth, *and* she knows that she looks best with that smile on, I may have trouble maintaining my credibility with her if I try to get out of painting the teeth. In any case, they don't intimidate me. It is a simple truth that the smile takes me as long to paint as the two eyes do. The teeth are nothing more than small parts of a larger whole. I think I'm stuck with the smile.

When I'm done, I'm sure I will need to post that effort in the critique section, and you will have another opportunity to say, 'you should not have painted those teeth.' At that time, I will relinquish my bulldog grip on the matter and admit that you were right from the start. Then we will all have a good laugh at my expense.


Chris,

This is just the information I was hoping for. It will help me when I go back for more reference photos. And this time, I will get into their closet. I will be The Boss.

Thank you very much,
Will

Good luck and Merry Christmas Will,

I'm sure you'll do fine. Looking forwad to seeing the final result.

Merry Christmas to all on the Forum,
Anthony

Finally, after two months, I have buttoned down another photo session! I am pleased with the results, thanks in large part to Chris Saper's suggestion that I become the boss of the session, and much of the other good photo advice that is to be found on this forum.

I prevailed mightily upon them both to wear white. I spoke convincingly of high art, alluded to a skill set which I may or may not possess, and I now have their approval to paint a portrait rather than a landscape with a few figures in the middle distance.

Here is the reference photo. Will anyone offer suggestions before I proceed?

Will

Will,

What an exciting improvement! You have really clarified your values and composition.

You'll have some great opportunities to lose edges in the shadow side of the man's shirt.

The background you may wish to consider bringing up to a middle value, darker than the skin but lighter than the hair. It looks on my monitor to be a middle-dark grayed-down yellow green; even if not, I'd probably paint it that color anyway. I like the framed painting in the background; you'll want to watch out so it doesn't become a tangent with the outer curve of her hair.

This will be a fun painting for you to do, and I look forward to seeing it!