Like many an artist, I’ve read a good many books, viewed many a video and studied with a quite a few experts. My initial idea was to read anything that I thought would be useful, but after I had read about 30 books and taken a few classes I was more confused than ever. So about ten years ago I decided to get organized, take careful notes (in my own words except as otherwise noted) and compile them into a single document so that I could compare what one expert said with what others said.
The resulting document was so helpful, that I have continued to edit, delete and reorganize my notes ever since. Art is so extensive that every book and every instructor has to focus, but my notes could be more wide-ranging, especially as I limited them to bullet points. Anyway, I thought others might find them useful.
The notes were for my own use, so I tried to avoid taking notes on something I already knew. Consequently, the neophyte should look elsewhere for instruction, but I think the advanced artist will find them quite helpful. They are, currently, organized into eight categories: color, composition, design, drawing, figure painting, landscape painting, still life painting, and vision and light. They are all posted on my website and, assuming WetCanvas has no objection, I will be posting them all in the proper categories on WetCanvas. What follows is the section on figure painting.[/I]
Keene Wilson
Figure Painting
Expert Advise from Contemporary, Mostly Figurative, Colorists
Henry Yan, Robert Johnson, Harley Brown, Dan McCaw, Ramon Kelley, Jove Wang and Steve Huston

Dan McCaw’s Oil Painting Process

1 Gather ideas
2 a) Explore Through Sketching (including hiring models, scouting location, finding costumes) focusing on the big shapes and keeping image simple; supplement with photos 2 b) thumbnail sketches asking “What if?” Try as many different designs as you can think of
3 Design with Value Studies (2 – 5 values) – Design of the value shapes is the most important thing holding a painting together, work out edges
4 Establish Color – Cover canvas with flat blocks of color (no variation, no detail), starting with the obvious b) fill each shape with lively color, c) adjust color so big shapes relate well, d) Compare: warm/cool, dark/light, gray/intense, on-going painting with design study. Don’t worry about getting the color 100% correct, perhaps go a little brighter in the half tones and shadows, start bright and tone down later if needed Focus on getting the relationships right and there will be little need to model Keep strength with value and design, use color to enhance e) slight variations within shapes to suggest three-dimensional form, BUT only to a limited portion of image (for example, model light areas and simplify shadows)
5 Modify and Interpret – Move slowly and choose actions carefully Evaluate value, design, color. Add final accents and highlights THOUGHTFULLY simplifying may be more important
Jove Wang

Thinks thoroughly about design, mood, color and subject matter before applying paint to canvas. Follow feelings. Keep initial feeling about pose/design in mind throughout painting process.
Step 1a – Using reference photo, preliminary sketch indicating basic shapes, compositional lines and geometric elements
Step 1b – Develop value pattern, select shapes and join darks [for contrast and to imply distance] Be passionate.
Step 2 – Color sketch establishing warm and cool areas. Add color notes.
Its’s obvious that he emphasizes color variation.
Uses palette knife frequently to help de-emphasize areas (such as distant eye or side of the face, [flowers] away from focal point) Also seems to use it to develop a ghost of an image that he can improve.
Pushes subtle warm/cool differences to “sculpt” the face.
Takes great care to ensure that dark pigments (mixed with Liquin) do not include any white, a key to richness and translucency of his style.
Composition first, then color and value contrast as well paint, line and mass. Finally, subject matter and mood.
In areas away from focal point, he “pulls some of this into that”.
In some areas [scarf and flowers] he lays down thick paint [with palette knife], slightly blends [with brush], reworks adding more [remixed] paint, and reworks again, but never totally obliterating what went before.
Palette arranged with darks on one side and lights on the other – but, pulls warm and cool pigments from opposite sides of his palette and mixes them in the middle.
Often holds brush loosely at the very far end.
Often eliminates harsh brushstrokes [as for the eyes] with a quick flick of the brush with one edge precise and one feathered
Often uses thumb to blend [tone down] unwanted [usually incorrect value] brushstrokes into adjacent value.
Steve Huston’s Painting Process

Key points:
The drawing has to be the same idea as the painting
When in doubt, simplify. Edit! in service of the idea.
Err to the dynamic (push in the direction of my idea). Lighter, warmer and more intense than you think (to depict light). We know that we’re going to make errors so make sure our errors work for us.
Whenever we render form, begin with 2 values (light and shadow). Each will have a value range which doesn’t overlap the other. Within these two values can show core shadow, cast shadow, reflected light, and highlight.
Note: Steve Huston was a student of Dan McCaw
It’s not what you put in, it’s what you leave out. When you leave something out, what’s left over becomes more important.
Work in mass rather than plane, because it allows for more dynamic stroke interactions at the edges where values/colors meet.
There are no absolutes in art only relationships.
The masters would often refine their basic shapes and design and then simply draw back into it.
Generally, don’t want to use extremes of what we can do, but hold a little in reserve.
Break art into segments to learn, but the artwork needs to be one complete whole.
The halftone has gradation and determines the speed the form turns.
Usually Steve Huston deals with design and realism in the first sitting and deals with the abstract paint quality in the second sitting. For at least half the painting, he is an abstract artist.
Sargent would place a dark stroke parallel with the hairline and then come back with a parallel flesh color to get the transition from flesh to hair.
Each layer of space should have its own value range, but may have 5 or more layers.
Each object in a painting needs to have its own character. eg Each apple needs to have its own color even if they’re all red.
You can’t have it all, so you have to give up something the get the result you want. Not “This is what it is”, but “This is what it means”.
For the real darks, corrections can be made just by drawing, but be careful it doesn’t get spotty.
Shadows most important job is to be dark, then cool, then gray, in that order.
Almost no value change in light until we get to a really big structural change such as the nose or eye socket.
Step 1 Severe grouping into 2, 3 or 4 values and 5 or 6 shapes.

Make choices, edit.
In 3 value grouping, usually better to make middle value closer to one of the other 2 values than the other
Make a choice and stick with it
Be very disciplined and consistent with your choices
Strong, usually simple, choices.
Easiest to separate lights and darks, then reinforce lights with highlights and reinforce darks with core shadows.
Whenever you change your value, change the color and intensity
As a first step, make all your shadows the same value. As a second step you can slightly lighten the reflected light and slightly darken the core shadow.
When things are about the same value, make them the same value.
Step 2 Refine values/shapes

Start to develop the form by default
Use the colors in the basic value/color structure to create your minor colors
When laying in color and value, don’t move too quickly to finish, muck around until they are just what you want before you proceed further. Also, you may want to leave it with the unfinished/abstract look.
Initially, the three values are separate and distinct and not ranges, but ultimately the three values become three distinct value ranges. Within the separated values there can be subtle value differences, but the ranges are distinct. Maintain the distinction with each plane having its own value and temperature relative to other planes within the value range.
Use corners (core shadow and highlight) to define structure.
Find the beginning, the ending, the shape and shadow of the form.
Often adds “ribbon of color” to light side of the core shadow.
Before you get too careful in the drawing, see what you can loose, where you can fade off, blend, what can be softer, rounder, subtler, more gradated.
Step 3 Gradation

Before you do “stair step” of form
Step 4 Edges

Once you have the shape (value/color/temperature) as well defined as you want
Step 5 Rendering

When you get into rendering, what you really want are temperature shifts.
Do middle lights and middle darks before highlights or deep shadow. Look for big “stair steps” of form.
Every time you change the value, change the temperature. Don’t, however, loose the initial color structure.
Better to loose all the detail than to destroy the silhouette.
Go down a little bit then work across, down, then across, etc.
At the edges is where you can bring in a little extra color.
What to think about while painting

Make clear decisions up front: What are going to be the lightest/darkest, richest/grayest, warmest/coolest areas of the canvas? Sergei Bongart
Museum quality
How do I paint this “beautiful” color, landscape, etc.?
Steve Huston

When deciding values, compare with one lighter and one darker.
Is it lighter/darker, warmer/cooler, greener/redder? Then, think about painting emphasis: contrast, moody, high key, what happens to the light? Be consistent.
Different plane = different value, different temperature, but don’t loose the color structure
Make sure that you are painting with your idea.
Only two choices: what do I group, what do I separate?
Once you get the color and value structure laid in, what you pay attention to is not the subtle changes of form, but the principles of structure.
Jove Wang

Before starting spend time setting up and thinking about model (the feeling [melody] you want to retain). Retain that feeling throughout the painting. If you loose your feeling, go to another area to recapture, then return when you recapture feeling.
“Don’t be so calm when you paint, bring your passion into it”, but understand form and structure without treating mechanically.
For his brushstrokes he is “thinking about power and variety”. Also, evidently, using thick paint to portray form by contrasting thick (coming forward) with thin (pushed back). For variety he uses a multitude of brushstrokes (calligraphy, big, small, tiny, forcefully pushed in/delicate, slow/fast, thick/thin, jagged/sharp/broken/soft) but the basic contrast was between scraped (over all of an area/plane such as the front of a face) vs thick (in those areas coming forward, but not in the scraped area)
Jove Wang

Keys: composition, interesting point of emphasis (as the gesture or the way glasses sit on the nose), rhythm, contrast
Jove follows his feeling while he is painting, does most of his thinking beforehand.
Composition – should have “melody” (feeling), proportion, different spaces/sizes, gesture
Rhythm – flow, not just rigid, formal pose.
Don’t copy what you see, just relationships (seems to use close value range)
Careful with placement of each stroke, lots of “dancing” strokes, hesitates before assertively placing each stroke
Sometimes paints tight, then scrapes out (thus looks loose, but is tight)
Doesn’t paint everything as tight as he sees it.
Always tries to figure out the grays within a painting
“Good paintings have lots of variety within content.”
Morgan Weistling

Darkest dark should usually be a warm
look for halation (glow) coming off head
top planes in shadow will be cooler than underside – look for, don’t just use formulas
internal forms not as sharp as external
Xaoming Wu

shadow side – focuses more on color than drawing; light side – focuses more on drawing than color
think about flow of marks and use interesting, but not necessarily accurate, lines
Kevin Macpherson’s Painting Process

Paint the lightest light
Paint he darkest dark
Paint the easiest color
Establish a colorful shadow pattern – It is easier to gain control of the light family colors, by first placing all the shadow shapes accurately
Fill in the lights
Put it down and leave it alone using thick opaque color with simple strokes.
Mike Svob’s Painting Process

Applies watercolour techniques to other mediums. Paints matter in whatever colour he wants. His paintings are abstract in the sense that nothing in them exists in reality but uses “real” appearance to tie the painting together.
Svob’s usual way to start a painting is to pick a dominant colour like warm orange and as he goes along he uses colour to bring out interest in different areas of the painting. He will often underpaint in one colour to provide the finished painting with a greater impact. His palette is limited and made up of warm and cool yellow, red and blue usually topped with orange or violet to provide transparency or opaqueness. Some characteristics of his work are that he focuses on edges and how they melt in with one another and uses layers of paint to create an opaque or transparent glaze.
“It’s a battle… between making it look interesting and making it look real. Sometimes real is boring, so it’s more important to make the painting look interesting, so I ask what do I leave out and what do I put in to improve the painting?” Svob wants his work to look like it’s painted by a human hand.
[FONT=&quot]According to Svob: [/FONT]

As a general guide, visually transparent passages of paint are more appealing than opaque passages.
The main elements that make a strong painting:

[*]Subject

[*]Composition and direction
[*]Tonal map
[*]Edges
[*]Colors, warm and cool.

Colors are not that important and therefore you can play with them without destroying the belief in reality. We understand the world by shapes and tonal values alone. Color is not necessary. As a result, you can allow yourself total freedom when it comes to colors: “Only use colors you like – no other”
You have to understand how the human eye behaves when it views a scene for the first time. Work with that knowledge, and your paintings will have more drama and will evoke strong reactions.
If some characteristic of a subject appeals to you make sure you drive that message home in the painting. The more elegant and simply stated your message, the more positive will be the response.
Make your darks really dark to achieve strong contrast
Step 1 Select a study photo.
Step 2 Make an outline drawing.
Step 3 Start with the darks. Ignore the color and small tonal value changes
Step 4 The glaze and the middle value.
Step 5 Re-establish the lights with opaque paint.
Henry Yan’s Painting Process

Gray gesso underpainting helps for one-day painting, doesn’t use for longer paintings
Uses Turpenoid to thin underpaintings, doesn’t use much as too much Turpenoid makes it dull, adding a little linseed oil counteracts, dammar also adds shine
Liquin tends to smooth out the brush strokes, but will help brush strokes go further
50% Turpenoid to 50 % Linseed Oil is the most popular; add more linseed oil to make shinier
The juncture between two shapes looks more natural if you paint the first shape larger than necessary, then overlap slightly with the second shape
Distinguishing between cast (hard edge) and core (soft edge) shadows will enable a 3-diminsional look right away; often need to sharpen cast shadows
Sometimes exciting brushstrokes are actually very carefully laid in
Be especially careful when using light yellow and white so you keep it clean
Exaggerate color and drawing, but based on accuracy
Shouldn’t show brushwork everywhere because you need some areas more finished
Adds more greens to his palette when he paints landscapes
When you see highlights, core and reflected light you can show a little bit, but don’t overdo. Its easy to overwork and loose the lighting structure
Generally doesn’t clean his brushes with Turpenoid – wipes with a cloth, stores in coking oil
Always have a portion that is mysterious
Choose how much detail to paint, how much to loose, but some detail may be saved until the “finish”
Subtlety is power: make clear, loose, but with some areas really loud
As he paints each portion of a painting he asks himself: “Is there any different color I can use?”
Do not paint something in a color very different from the color system or you will destroy the harmony
He seldom blends colors with their complement in realistic painting
Light

Studio lights are generally warm; window lighting cool
Sometimes sky causes blueness [on upward facing surfaces]
Three things affect color: light source, local color, environment
With a warm light source, if there are some warms in mostly cool shadows, paint warms for both lights and shadows then come back with cools
Be careful about the light source on your canvas and palette. If its too yellow you will paint a yellow painting
Reflected lights on the figure are often very warm
Figure

Draws with warm color (burnt umber) and turpenoid a little wet, but not too wet. Darker = less Turpenoid, lighter = more turp
Can use dull green as a cool color in the figure, but be very careful using blue – Doesn’t always paint green shadows – depends on what he sees. Don’t use much blue or green in figure
One way to start in warm light is with warm underpainting, but could start with cool colors
He draws accurately [and directly; that is top-to-bottom with only a few markers] then carefully follows shapes so he doesn’t loose shapes
Can either paint all lights then deal with subtlety later or paint each tone directly from the very beginning
He paints lights [first before painting the adjacent mid-tone] much larger than he sees, then blends the majority of what he laid down with the flesh color
Muscular model` – need to be very careful with shapes
When the background is really crazy [with lots of invented color] you can borrow from the background and add to the figure but you still have to keep the form
Make painting 85% one thing; not half and half (of, say, complements)
When loosing the figure into the background, paint the background first. Still need to find something, usually a joint, so you can show more structure pp 90 and 109 of his book
Color logic in warm light: warm lights, cool core, reflected light warm – highlight = value 1 cad yellow, form = warm skintone (cad red, yellow ochre and white, core = cool (veridian and yellow ochre), reflected light = warm (orange), darkest cast (alizarin with a little cad red), cast = greenish as it gets farther from the darkest area
Wrong shapes for highlights and you won’t get form. Also need to show core shadow shapes carefully
Darker skin tones – yellow ochre, and Terra Rosa or Transparent oxide red
Can always use a red for very dark cast shadows – Cad red is not dark enough so use alizarin with a little cad red
Fine if some brushstrokes don’t follow the form, but not too many
Brushstrokes that look cool may take many tries
When he hires a model, he just takes photos
Clothing: Need general strategy

Paint overall mid-tone, but not too thick so you can add darks
Solve problems within the 20-25 min of a single pose
Backgrounds

Should put in early and borrow some of the background color for the figure
Think about what suits your painting best; sometimes just modify reality slightly
Don’t bring in inharmonious color. If a color you see is not what you want bring into painting a color you do want.
If you have a generally yellow ochre painting with a turquoise background, add a little yellow ochre to the background [and turquoise to the foreground]
In a vignette of a female back with a blue shadow, he painted the background blue because he wanted to explain the blue shadow. Similarly, in a vignette with touch of red showing below a seated figure, he showed a small amount of the red cloth to explain the red reflected on the figure.
With a generally harmonized painting, you can add a little out of harmony to make it more interesting, but don’t overdo
Possibly (l to r) foreground warm to cool with background cool to warm
Sometimes cover a portion of the figure with the background color.
Grays

Uses complement to gray colors but not necessarily exact complement; rich grays are what determine the best paintings
Exaggerate saturation of grays to make the painting more exciting
Change plane = change value and temperature
Learning Concepts

Follow the rules when you’re learning, but not as an “artist”
Copy master paintings
Has students paint with: 1 a limited palette for several weeks; 2 later adds cadmium yellow and cadmium red, possibly burnt sienna or burnt umber; 3 then full palette, 4 then premixed colors
Pastels are very helpful for getting used to oil painting with color
Spend time on the difficult areas, not much on the easy stuff
Students tend to make everything clear – need to move beyond that stage
Limited Palette Process

Draw with burnt umber on a grayed canvas
1 yellow ochre, 2 tera Rosa, Venetian red or transparent red oxide and 3 dark [burnt umber] plus white
Shadows one color, skin tone another, then add lights
Full Palette Process

Three primaries, plus white and earth tones. Can add yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, sap green, cobalt blue, cerulean, etc.
1 Gray ground
2 Drawing including darks, using burnt umber
3 Indication of background so you can judge color against color
4 Highlights, leaving the ground as a mid-tone
5 Tries to mix correct flesh tone right away
6 subtle greens [depending on what he sees] for shadows
7 As plane changes, adjusts value by using more flesh color
8 Pick a few areas as focal points – more carefully rendered, exaggerated color
Pre-mixed Colors

Henry uses often
Harley Brown’s Painting Process

Start by putting gestural marks on the paper
Select a dominant value and a dominant color and as an initial step create a monochromatic painting
Block in largest shapes (shadow and light, but mostly shadow) as you see them
Link lights and darks with interesting angles and edges to create a flowing dramatic design
Always do hair and the background at the same time
“Picking the right valued color means that you have picked mostly the right color.”
Lose edges into the shadows.
Emphasize the diagonals that are always present
Color and value appears truest in the core and is where many artists hit color most strongly.
Use the Munsell color system
May introduce the Munsell complementary color occupying a much smaller space at full intensity, or more area if “grayed”
Approximately equal amounts of discords, used sparingly
Graying (or watering) down a complement will allow you to use more of it
Robert Johnson’s Floral Painting Process

Spends a lot of time painting with the canvas upside down
Step 1 – Toned canvas

yellow ochre with some transparent red oxide, and cobalt blue
Step 2 – Design Stage

Thin, loose massing using turpentine, moroger medium with transparent red oxide and French Ultramarine to loosely design on canvas
Thinking about abstract organization of space: relationships, negative space, size, placement, variety of shapes
Holds brush very loosely
Frequently uses turp to thin and wipe away with cloth
Think ahead as to what will be light/dark
Step 3 – Background

Dark, thick background (with ground showing through in places) using large Badger brush (with hairs going every which way), moroger medium, Ultramarine Blue and transparent red oxide
Loose, artistic, design essentially got lost
Step 4- Pick out lights

Pick light shapes out of background with a cloth
Should be done with an aesthetic sense. Even at this stage, should look like an artist did it.
Step 5 – Foliage

Adds slight suggestion of foliage (viridian)
Every stroke you do now should be put in as if it is going to be a final statement
Step 6 – Place Lightest Light

Light areas thicker than dark
Very carefully places each stroke
Anchors lightest light and darkest dark so he knows where values will go from then on
Step 7 – Mass of Foliage

Paint the mass of foliage with sensitivity to flow/direction
Later will select a few leaves and branches to do with the utmost care. “Don’t ignore details, but be very selective.”
Step 8 – Flowers

Don’t stylize flowers, do not just block in, but paint them detail by detail in a painterly way
Often places just little specs of paint in the right place
Painted all flowers of each color concurrently before proceeding to next color
Step 9 – Shadows

Anchor roses with shadows
Step 10 – Finish

Refinement, details, accents
Shadows:

Key Points:
Light and shadow should intertwine with strong linked dark shapes, equally strong linked light shapes and with interesting edges and angles.
No texture or details or strong colors in the shadows.
Cast shadows are usually darker and sharper edged than form shadows.
It’s often interesting to have less detail in the light side than the shadow side, but only if it’s just a sliver of light
Ramon Kelley

Lay in washes boldly, but put on impasto strokes slowly
Often maintains sharp distinctions between warm and cool areas, to the point of using a different palette for each area

Master’s

Zorn’s Palette

white, black, yellow ochre and brick red
Fechin’s Technique

Fechin would start with an abstract and bring it back to realism in select areas such as the face and hands, but basically an abstract composition
Generally Fechin used casein tempera for the underpainting. While the pigment was being reduced of its oil content, he would block in the basic values in casein tempera, using a brilliant white, gesso-type porous ground. He often remarked that it was a shame to spoil such a beautiful surface. The porosity of the ground which was first prepared with cottage cheese, rabbit’s skin glue, and other ingredients, and then with Merck casein ground, further absorbed oil so the end result has a true matte finish

After the ground and the casein had set sufficiently, he would apply oil colors. At times he became impatient to begin work; he did not allow the adequate aging of the first two and the results were disastrous. The ground dried at one speed, the casein at another, the oil at still another; thus, considerable chipping and cracking occurred. When two dry substances are made to adhere to each other (the ground and the pigment), they will remain intact as long as there is a sufficient bond – in this case, oil. Fechin would be greatly annoyed with his own impatience. Usually, he did respect the chemistry of his materials. The use of two types of paints, one more plastic than the other, the dry brush technique, the juxtapositioning and layering of colors, and the purposeful omission of color to expose the white ground are the essentials of Fechin’s technique during this Taos period. As in Russia, he applied his color with brush, palette knife, and thumb. Once he developed lead poisoning after repeated moistening of the palette knife on his tongue; however, this moistening was the added touch which gave a special sheen to the skin tones

In Fechin’s words: “Also for myself, I do not like to use medium. This dissolves the paints too much. The pigments mix up together, do not retain their individual distinctness and thus again lose much of their fresh intensity.”

“To avoid murky results, it is necessary to learn how to use the three basic colors and to apply them, layer upon layer, in such a way that the underlying color shows through the next application. For instance, one can use blue paint, apply over it some red in such a manner that the blue and the red are seen simultaneously and thus produce the impression of a violet vibration. If, in the same careful manner, one puts upon his first combination a yellow color, a complete harmonization is reached – the colors are not mixed, but built one upon the other, retaining the full intensity of their vibrations.”
Miscellaneous Artists

Caravagio left out all the shadows.
Sorolla used a rainbow of colors but left out the very darks and very brights.
William Merritt Chase used to block in his colors, then clean his palette and brushes to keep his colors really clean.