Thursday, January 15, 2009













































A comment came up inquiring to my thoughts as to
where the color's influence to the rendering of form
stood prominent acquiring the appearance of the
flesh tone
in my working of Beau (?) thinking much
was accomplished by color more so than values.

You know...to my thinking, even the gray black
and white version here looks pretty good, which is
often a standard to judge if a painting holds well,
even so...not a lot of value variation is required in
the face to read believable.

In fact looking at such works as Sargent's "Lady
Agnew" or Mary Cassatt's painting of the bath...
converting the work to grayscale would show what
might seem little influence of value variation...
though color itself is playing a good part.

Perhaps such is a way to control unwanted blemishes
or things attributed to the appearance of aging...
something then that suggests well the fairness of a
lady's flesh or that of a child. In converting my own
work of Beau here to grayscale...you see how little
variation in values there really is letting you know
that color was more behind the rendering of form.

Here is Cassatt's work for comparison-

5 comments:

René PleinAir said...

A lovely grand daughter Larry,
she would be proud later when she can tell you painted it, ...

My girlfriend I and where a bit shocked to see the girl so old,
you can imagine how relieved and
pleased we where to read about the
second grand daughter you had,
hehehe.

Take care you old painter!

Larry Seiler said...

yeah...tell me about it!!! Startin' to feel gravity's pull a bit more too! That ole one foot nearer the grave thing...

I'm stubborn though!

thanks Rene...!!

Unknown said...

Yeah, wow. Not a whole lot of value variation, but the darks that ARE there do a lot to support the form. You are right, even in grey scale it doesn't read too flat. But, wow when you do add in the color change, things start to really turn and look 3D. As someone who draws and is just getting into color and oils, this is very helpful to know. Thanks!

SEILER said...

This is looking really great Dad! If you don't mind me saying one little thing . . . a critique of sorts? You know what Sargent says about portrait painting?
I feel the mouth is off a bit, if you flip the reference horizontally and flip the painting horizontally, I think you'll see what I'm saying. I think that this technique is really cool, the painting has a strong quality to it.

Larry Seiler said...

sent you an email too, Jason...I'll give it a go, flip the image upside down and painting...

no reason this can't be worked on some more...as its purpose is to learn. Thanks...