Hartford: Day 2

CF Payne and Gary Kelley demo their process and techniques.

zdepski's photos of CF Payne's portrait Demo

This is a demo on a portrait of fellow illustrator and instructor, Sterling Hunley. Payne builds his approach by layers... plenty of layers. His method would be anathema to a fine art's conservator, but Chris says he's been doing it for 30 years and nothing's fallen apart, yet. He sketches his drawing in Pismacolor on illustration board, then washes a light flesh tone over the skin area in thin acrylic. The next step is a watercolor/gouache mid-tone flesh color washing over the dry acrylic. Chris pushes the drying time by using a blow dryer... The watercolor is then reactivated by clear water on brush tip pickouts... using a clean paper towel to lift pigment to reveal the highlights.
Blow dry....

now it get's crazy... He blends OIL Dioxyzine Purple with a touch of permanent green to dull the intensity in a vehicle wash of Turps... this is washed over the dried acrylic and watercolor painting...
Again, the lift out of areas of highest light and pulling of the mid-tone with a Kneaded Eraser. The oil is left to dry with time, not forced with a blowdryer or heat lamp.

A spray coating of Workable Fixative is sprayed and allowed to dry the painting.

Chris begins to work light Prismacolor pencil into the image, popping highlight and midtones. He then mixes light, mid or dark washes of acrylic to continue the render... his back and forth between pencil and acrylic can continue for days as he works to high levels of finish.

zdepski's photos of Gary Kelley's portrait Demo


Kelley's approach is to gather reference from life, photography, then work abstraction within the line and composition. Gary's pastel approach is as "fine art" as I have seen. He will not do color studies, but relies on his pallet to lead him as he lays in color into regions, then merging new colors within or up to existing fields... playing one off the other.

Surprise and color discoveries are integral in Gary's process. He loves looking to art history for his influence; Beckmann, Picasso and Modigliani

zdepski's photos of CF Payne's portrait Demo
zdepski's photos of CF Payne's portrait Demo

Finally, I squeaked in a few minutes between demos and lectures to work on my Arnold portraits... I like what's going on.

gettin jiggy.

Comments

Popular Posts