Husband/wife composition

[Will Enns]

Hi everyone,

I have a couple coming to discuss the possibility of a husband/wife portrait comission. They are quite impressed with my work, so I don't think it need be a hard sell, but I was hoping to present them with some compositional possibilites.

They will be quite open minded to my suggestions, but I was hoping to offer ideas that are artistically sound.

I've browsed a fair part of the SOG main site, and have found very few husband/wife portraits, and none that stood out to me especially, although I've not had time to go through all of them.

Are there some simple guidelines one should follow that apply to husband/wife compositions?

And are there any good examples of which you might be aware?

Thanks in advance,
Will

[Leslie Ficcaglia]

I'm working on one now, in which the husband and wife are standing close together in their yard with trees framing them; it includes them from the waist up. I also have a husband/wife portrait on my gallery page, and there's a lovely nontraditional example on another forum member, Catherine Muhly,'s page at http://www.crmuhly.com/pages1024/index.html

If you're going to be working from photos which you will take, you can learn a lot by the way they position themselves relative to each other for the photo shoot, and that can be portrayed in the work. I would suspect that they have a fairly clear idea, if even on an unconscious level, of what they want the painting to look like.

Good luck with the commission!

[Will Enns]

I have applied what I recently read in M. Baumgartner's discourse on 3 value massing. I am hoping the experts will tell me if I'm close.

The following sketches are of Dennis and Carol, the clients I mentioned above. Reference was taken on a mountain near here. The setting is yellowed winter grass, still standing. The mountain is spotted with areas of ponderosa pines (the kind of trees that have 6" needles and cones the size of my brain.) It is a virtually di-chromatic setting. (Is di-chromatic a word? I mean there are two colors - the yellow grass and the dark green trees, both muted.

In both sketches, the lightest mass is represented by the upper clothing and faces, the darkest mass is the hair and jeans. The rest I will endeavor to paint as middle value.

It is the first time I have tried composition based on value-massing, but already I like it!

So I have 2 questions:

1) If you could, for a moment, visualize these sketches as finished paintings, which of the following sketches would be more appealing?

• a) The first sketch has them sitting on a rock under the open sky with yellow grassy hills disappearing out of the top of the frame. The grass and rock would fall into the middle value.
  
  b) The second sketch has them in the same setting, but with a nearby ponderosa pine's branches forming a frame around them in the darker end of the middle values. In this sketch, there would be more trees reaching up to the top of the frame, making for a fairly even value. The forground grasses would fall in the lighter end of the middle value.

2) Can you offer other suggestions with regard to the composition?

Another: (You're right, I said 2 questions. But I'm learning to count on a different forum, and hadn't got high enough yet. That is why this question is numbered "another.")

Dennis likes his black leather vest; Carol likes her deerskin jacket. I'm not thrilled with those colors, but they do provide high contrast in the center of interest. Is this combination desirable, or is there a better way to handle the clothing?

[Will Enns]

The more complex sketch...

[Peggy Baumgaertner]

Will,

Number two has a nice rhythmic sweep with the dark value tree on the right moving into the dark massing of the man's and the woman's jeans.

You are missing one of the values (...there are just too many uses for the word "value,"...) of doing the three massing studies. Your thumbnail sketch isn't in three values. You've designated what the values would be in the drawing, but haven't actually done the massing in the drawing. If you did as Chris does here http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...?threadid=1870 , you can readily see what the painting will look like, and make the decisions.

The pine branches in the background would look fine if it were kept, the entire section, to three value massing, with the detail handled within that middle value scale. It would not work if it is as you've drawn, some the branches in a dark value and some in a middle value. It would be too much, and take away from the figures.

You also need to be very precise, even at this stage. This is when it is all happening! Are the faces of the subjects in the shadow a middle value? And their faces in the light a light value? What of her shirt? Is it light at the shoulders, and middle at her chest? Is the man's shirt light value, on his sleeve? Because you've made it a middle value in the sketch.

That is basically it, Will.

You've got, I think, a pretty good handle on the concept, but you are not using it to its full potential by precisely and simply determining where the three values will be massed, and accurately showing that information in your thumbnail.

One more thing, show no detail at this stage. No features, no pockets, folds, etc.

Again, see Chris's example. Just masses...big masses.

Peggy

[Will Enns]

Peggy,

I think I get it now, and certainly some of the decisions become easier to make.

So below are a few more ideas I've played with. I'm leaning more toward the simpler ones.

As I consider value massing in art that I like by others, I find that simpler massing tends to generate a more positive response. This is a worthy lesson in my own compositional efforts.

BTW, I do realize these could be more refined.

Thank you for taking the time to help,

Will

[Peggy Baumgaertner]

Will,

Good job! Yes, I see you are getting the idea. It is so easy to get a feeling for where you want to go with these simple thumbnails. I like both the compositions on the right, the one on the left seems a little...isolated...

Peggy

[Sharon Knettell]

Will, I have a couple on my website here at SOG. Maybe it is one of the ones you didn't like, nevertheless I will give you some ideas that have worked for me.

If you have a background as complex as you are proposing, the couple should have clothing in closely related colors. They should form a strong single shape against the very busy background. Breaking up the colors too much, fractionates the composition. I think the overall shape of your figures are not dynamic enough, they should be bolder considering the drama of the landscape. I always go through my clients wardrobe with them before I start. I explain to them that their clothing is a very important part of the picture, it should be chosen for color harmony, suitability, and of course, personal style. If their clothes harmonize in some way it gives them also more unity as a couple.

Catherine Muhly is a very fine painter, her couple figure is lovely. However they are not up against a complicated background. You can get more complex figure arrangments against simpler backgrounds than against busy ones. Mary Cassat has a wonderful painting of a father and son, both form a unified black shape. Sargent did a son and his mother, both their outfits were different, but he had them against black.

I hope this helps. Sincerely,

[Peggy Baumgaertner]

Will,

In both the first sketch and the more completed value study posted next, you have lopped the legs off the bottom of the drawings. In painting with this intricate background and double subject matter, I don't think you can get away with a vignetted foreground. In which case, the bottom of the painting needs to be specifically delineated, gentleman's leg accurately represented as to how it will drop off the bottom of the portrait.

I also kind of like the idea of the tree trunk to the right be in a dark value sweeping to the man's vest and pants, with the rest of the background being a middle value, just to see what that would look like.

But there needs to be a bottom on your portrait.

Peggy

[Will Enns]

Sharon,

I've not posted back till now because everything was in limbo. But I just talked with them again and they have finally come to their senses. I'll be able to get up close and personal, do away with the big background, and take a peek at the whites of their eyes. Things are looking up.

Essentially, the goal is to portray these folks as though there is still some romance in their relationship, which in fact there is. It calls for a certain interaction between the couple that is more often seen in wedding photos than in formal portraits of couples. To achieve such a feeling of intimacy is my challenge in this effort.

If I have my way, it will be a very simple background.

I am starting to think educating the client is as much work as the painting itself. Sheesh! I wonder if we can charge extra for that?

To answer your implied question, I had not seen your couple. In any case, I was not making judgements, but commenting that none of the couple portraits I had seen at that point generated a resonance with me. I think this must be a very dificult thing to achieve.

Thank you for taking the time to seek out those examples.


Peggy,

Thank you for these good suggestions. Even though I won't apply them directly in this instance due to the change in composition, the lessons are not wasted. From reading your original post on the subject, I know I can apply all this even to a simple head and shoulders portriat.

I promise I will never again make a mistake involving 3-value massing. (And a chorus of voices issues forth from our speakers, "Riggghhht!")