Painting Portraits of Children E-Book

Simon Davis

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Painting a portrait of a child is one of the most complex challenges an artist will face. In this detailed and practical book, Simon Davis opens up his studio and explains his approach. As one of the country's leading portrait painters, he gives a unique insight into how to render a sympathetic portrait in oils, which avoids sentimentality and captures the essence of a child. Topics covered include the importance of composition and balance, tonality and palette, atmosphere and advice on the complete process, from first ideas to putting down the paintbrush. There are step-by-step examples of a range of children, including different ages, backgrounds and groups and an interview with fellow Royal Society of Portrait Painters artist Andrew James. This unique account of painting thoughtful, intelligent and honest portraits of children will be of great interest to portrait painters and anyone commissioning a portrait. Fully illustrated with 134 colour photographs.

Leseprobe

Painting Portraitsof Children

Simon Davis

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2017 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2017

© Simon Davis 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 291 5

Frontispiece: I prefer to use a tear-off palette rather than a traditional wooden one as I find them very simple and convenient. I try to keep my working practice as straightforward as possible.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the following people who helped with the making of this book: Andrea and Fiona for their enthusiasm and encouragement; Sophia, Taslima, Haydn, Luke and Arlo for their patience and tolerance (and the same goes for their parents too); Andrew James for his generosity with his time and advice and for being very sympathetic when technology sometimes conspired against us.

For Andrea

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1The Studio and Materials

CHAPTER 2Preparation

CHAPTER 3Sophia

CHAPTER 4Haydn

CHAPTER 5Taslima

CHAPTER 6Luke and Arlo

CHAPTER 7Other Works

CHAPTER 8Andrew James & Simon Davis

Afterword

Index

Introduction

Never work with animals or children.

– W.C. Fields

The author in his East London studio.

My intention with this book is to briefly outline a subject that can be as simple or complex as you choose to make it. I didn’t want this book to be a dry and joyless affair. Painting is generally a frustrating series of titanic disasters and tiny triumphs that either leave you feeling like a miserable failure or a towering genius. Neither, of course, is true. Like any kind of skill or craft, there is no alternative to repetition and hard work and no shortcuts to competence. As with most things, trial and error are often just as important in finding your way forward as success and accomplishment are. Pretty much every painter that I know struggles on a daily basis with the thousands of decisions that a painting demands, so whilst this book can never be a substitute for hard work and perseverance, it can perhaps suggest solutions to common problems and provide a degree of direction in times of uncertainty.

Having said that, as with all forms of portraiture (or indeed painting in general) the success or failure of a work does not always lie in the brilliance of technical skill. The ability to paint well (and some would argue that it is essential) is not the only factor involved in the creation of a good piece of work. Whilst I would never claim to have any great wisdom in these matters, I can perhaps provide pointers that can maybe illuminate, to an extent, what goes into the process that I adopt when undertaking a portrait. To my mind, some of the best pieces of work are done by those that could be considered to be not the most technically proficient painters and vice versa. To me, what separates good from bad is the level of thought and care given to areas such as composition, palette and atmosphere.

Painting portraits of children is often mistakenly considered to be a very simple and straightforward process. There is indeed a lot going for it. The subject can generally be free from any ego and vanity, offer little or no opinion and criticism and will generally have no interest in what you are actually doing or indeed the final outcome. In essence, the perfect scenario. However, there are other pitfalls that easily compensate for this, so being alert to these wouldn’t be a bad idea.

When I first started painting, my early commissions were usually of beloved family pets. Years of indifferent animals, refusing to be compliant soon made me come to the conclusion that if something seems like it is going to be simple, then the polar opposite will be nearer the truth.

In undertaking a portrait of a child, you can easily descend into sentimentality and banality (particularly if the subject is your or a family member’s child).

Sentimentality is not always a bad thing, as the innocence of youth can often be captured very effectively in this way. Some of my favourite children’s portraiture could be accused of being very sentimental and the obvious example here is John Singer Sargent’s Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885–86). In fact it could be argued that it is not really a portrait at all, being more of a painting about childhood. It features Polly and Dolly Barnard lighting lanterns in a garden in Broadway in Gloucestershire. What elevates it above the overly sentimental (apart from Sargent’s obvious brilliance as a painter) is its composition and ethereal and magical quality and its lack of obvious formal posing. It captures children being children and showing little regard to the artist or viewer and to me, the painting’s success lies in that.

Among the contemporaries of Sargent that I regard as being superlative painters of children are Henry La Thangue (1859–1929), James Guthrie (1859–1930) and George Clausen (1852–1944). These painters are often described as British Impressionists and were integral in my adopting the square-brush style that I invariably paint in. Their subject matter was almost always the depiction of rural life and many of the portraits of working children were without sickly sentiment. As a result they were compelling and provided an alternative view of childhood to those given by the more privileged portraits by the likes of Sargent, Giovanni Boldini (1842–1931) and Philip de László (1869–1937).

There are, of course, many artists whose work I admire for a variety of reasons, be it composition or technique and in Chapter Two I will go into why, for me, their work is worthy of further technical scrutiny.

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885–6) John Singer Sargent, 1856–1925. © Tate, London, 2016.

CHAPTER 1

The Studio and Materials

A comfortable space to work in is essential to the creation of work. I have had many different studio spaces over the years, some large and some small. One of the main determining factors to this is the size that you wish to paint. I prefer to paint small- to mediumsized pieces so currently have a relatively modest set-up. I have always made sure that I am able to work from home, be it a room in my house or a separate studio in the garden. A lot of painters rent studios, often with other artists, and this works very well for a number of reasons. The nearness to other artists can be motivational and inspiring so has much to recommend it. However I find that painting where I live works best for me. I cannot emphasize enough the luxury of a very short commute with limited distractions and the flexibility to work when I want. I did once try working in a studio away from my home. It lasted a month.