Green Key

Demonstration One Painting The Woman

We used to be taught to make on our canvas a very careful charcoal drawing of the sitter. To preserve this as a guide for painting we would spray it with fixative or outline it with pencil or brush. This approach seems to me almost useless, for the first thing we did when we started to paint over such a drawing was to begin to paint it out, and we were always in fear of losing it.

It is much easier to develop the correct proportions on the canvas by first painting them as large masses, after locating them somewhat sketchily by means of a few hasty brush lines. (A good illustration of the advantage of mass construction over line can be found in the puzzle picture of two squares, one in outline and the other in solid black. The question is: which square is the larger? Though the white square appears much larger, the two are exactly equal.)

So in my classes, instead of producing first a detailed drawing, we start by painting with the brush a few construction lines to locate the subject pleasingly in the picture area, and to approximate the proportions of the main masses. These masses will form the foundation on which will gradually be built, wholly with the brush, the likeness of our sitter. There are normally five of these:

1.Background                         4. The Clothing

2. First (Light) Flesh Tone       5. Shadow (Dark) Flesh

3. The Hair                             Tone

When we read on to Chapter IX, we shall find a detailed discussion of each of these masses.

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