Copy a Vermeer

[Mike Dodson]

I am curious if anyone else has started or completed this exercise? Would love to see others.

Thanks!

[Mari DeRuntz]

Hi Mike,

I did one last year, posted here on the Forum. Now I look at it and think, YIKES!

[Mike Dodson]

What do you mean "Yikes?"

You have a great sense of style. The drawing is very nice. I enjoy seeing each individual's interpretation of the same subject.

Thanks for sharing.

[John Zeissig]

Greetings, Folks

It took me a long time to complete this assignment: not much actual painting time, but a couple months of working to keep the wolf from the door (or working to qualify for medical insurance, which amounts to the same thing)!

I used the grisaille study as an underpainting, but first "devalued" it to something like Karin's example. I raised the value of the shadows and lowered the values of the brighter areas, so that only the mid tones were represented. Compared to my previous experience, I found that it's a lot easier to paint out to the extreme values from the mid range than vice-versa, especially when the color variable is introduced. Thanks, Karin, that's another trick I've picked up from you!

As I previously noted, I had two reproductions in a book from which to paint . The one on the cover had better detail, but the color seemed way too yellow, giving it a very "antique" appearance. The one in the interior seemed more lifelike in color, but was somewhat less saturated than the cover. Since I've never seen the original, I decided to split the difference and make the chroma somewhere between the two examples. Anyway, here's the result:

[John Zeissig]

Here's a detail of the face:

[Enzie Shahmiri]

John,

The painting turned out beautifully. You said you started with the mid values, did you do an underpaing the way Karin does it or was it a more direct approach? I like the color choices as well. It gives the painting an old world feel.

[John Zeissig]

Hi Enzie,

I basically converted my value study to an underpainting like Karin would do. This was just a matter of lightening up the shadows and darkening down the lighter parts. Her post on the previous page of this thread shows what it looks like: basically a low contrast value study. It didn't take very long to do this since my drawing was already done in the value study. I let it dry overnight and then started painting in color.

There's a good example of underpainting going on now in the oil critique section, where Chuck Yokoda is doing a painting by this method.

I don't always do an underpainting, but I thought that since I had the grisaille already done, I might as well use it for that purpose. When I have used underpainting, I always did something like a full value study. Karin's method seems a lot more comfortable to me, because as you darken the shadows and lighten the highlights you see the right contrast level coming together as you approach it.

Thanks for the compliment on the color. I'm at work now, stealing the boss's time, but the image of my painting looks a lot warmer than on my CRT at home. Particularly on the shaded cheek. In my reproductions and in my painting, the darkest shadow on that cheek is a lot cooler than the rest of the shadow on that side. I actually kind of like the warmer version I'm seeing on the LCD screen of this laptop, but it's not very faithful to the actual painting. Hey, maybe my "old world look" is just an artifact of these computers!

[Denise Hall]

John,

I am telling the truth when I say I love this copy. She is both sedate and moody and you have painted, in my opinion, a wonderfully crafted copy. I am very impressed with the color and lost edges.

I have the Girl with the Pearl as my screensaver, and am not quite ready to replace it with your copy.......yet!

Thanks for the notes, which I will refer to if I decide to do a copy someday. You should hang it in a beautiful frame somewhere special.

Sincerely,
Denise

[John Zeissig]

Denise,

Wow, that

[John Zeissig]

One thing that really struck me in doing this exercise was the extreme softness of edges and the exquisite subtlety of small color changes in Vermeer's technique. Unless my reproductions were lying to me, there are truly no hard edges to be found anywhere in the face in the original. This was noted in the original post by Michelle. I was going batty trying to reproduce some of these effects until I tried using some blown out old brushes that I was going to discard.

In working the areas around the eyes or the mouth, for example, I would first try to paint using a "good" brush. If that failed to achieve the desired softness, I would take a "funky" brush of the appropriate size and very lightly blend the area to try to match the reproduction. Toward the end of the painting I was using the "good" brushes only to scumble on small amounts of paint, followed by extensive softening and blending with "funky" brushes. Using the "funky" brushes to directly apply paint did not work out very well. The "funky" brushes had to be kept dry and clean for this to work properly.

I suppose the more experienced painters already know this. I've even done this before, but never near the extent that I did in this painting, so I thought it would be worth mentioning it in this context. By "funky" I mean a brush that has lost its original shape, usually because it was cleaned inadequately so that paint was allowed to harden at the junction of hairs and ferrule. The result is a shape like a three dimensional fan or a thistle bloom. Below is a scan of a "funky" brush that started life as a #2 square-edged sable. The scanner lid compressed the hairs a bit, so it's not as fluffy looking as it normally is, but I think it conveys something of what I mean.