Husband/wife composition
 

Hi everyone,

I have a couple coming to discuss the possibility of a husband/wife portrait comission. They are quite impressed with my work, so I don't think it need be a hard sell, but I was hoping to present them with some compositional possibilites.

They will be quite open minded to my suggestions, but I was hoping to offer ideas that are artistically sound.

I've browsed a fair part of the SOG main site, and have found very few husband/wife portraits, and none that stood out to me especially, although I've not had time to go through all of them.

Are there some simple guidelines one should follow that apply to husband/wife compositions?

And are there any good examples of which you might be aware?

Thanks in advance,
Will

I'm working on one now, in which the husband and wife are standing close together in their yard with trees framing them; it includes them from the waist up. I also have a husband/wife portrait on my gallery page, and there's a lovely nontraditional example on another forum member, Catherine Muhly,'s page at http://www.crmuhly.com/pages1024/index.html

If you're going to be working from photos which you will take, you can learn a lot by the way they position themselves relative to each other for the photo shoot, and that can be portrayed in the work. I would suspect that they have a fairly clear idea, if even on an unconscious level, of what they want the painting to look like.

Good luck with the commission!

The gospel according to Margaret Baumgartner - 3 value massing applied
 

I have applied what I recently read in M. Baumgartner's discourse on 3 value massing. I am hoping the experts will tell me if I'm close.

The following sketches are of Dennis and Carol, the clients I mentioned above. Reference was taken on a mountain near here. The setting is yellowed winter grass, still standing. The mountain is spotted with areas of ponderosa pines (the kind of trees that have 6" needles and cones the size of my brain.) It is a virtually di-chromatic setting. (Is di-chromatic a word? I mean there are two colors - the yellow grass and the dark green trees, both muted.

In both sketches, the lightest mass is represented by the upper clothing and faces, the darkest mass is the hair and jeans. The rest I will endeavor to paint as middle value.

It is the first time I have tried composition based on value-massing, but already I like it!

So I have 2 questions:

1) If you could, for a moment, visualize these sketches as finished paintings, which of the following sketches would be more appealing?

• a) The first sketch has them sitting on a rock under the open sky with yellow grassy hills disappearing out of the top of the frame. The grass and rock would fall into the middle value.
  
  b) The second sketch has them in the same setting, but with a nearby ponderosa pine's branches forming a frame around them in the darker end of the middle values. In this sketch, there would be more trees reaching up to the top of the frame, making for a fairly even value. The forground grasses would fall in the lighter end of the middle value.

2) Can you offer other suggestions with regard to the composition?

Another: (You're right, I said 2 questions. But I'm learning to count on a different forum, and hadn't got high enough yet. That is why this question is numbered "another.")

Dennis likes his black leather vest; Carol likes her deerskin jacket. I'm not thrilled with those colors, but they do provide high contrast in the center of interest. Is this combination desirable, or is there a better way to handle the clothing?

More complex 3-value massing
 

The more complex sketch...

Will,

Number two has a nice rhythmic sweep with the dark value tree on the right moving into the dark massing of the man's and the woman's jeans.

You are missing one of the values (...there are just too many uses for the word "value,"...) of doing the three massing studies. Your thumbnail sketch isn't in three values. You've designated what the values would be in the drawing, but haven't actually done the massing in the drawing. If you did as Chris does here http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...?threadid=1870 , you can readily see what the painting will look like, and make the decisions.

The pine branches in the background would look fine if it were kept, the entire section, to three value massing, with the detail handled within that middle value scale. It would not work if it is as you've drawn, some the branches in a dark value and some in a middle value. It would be too much, and take away from the figures.

You also need to be very precise, even at this stage. This is when it is all happening! Are the faces of the subjects in the shadow a middle value? And their faces in the light a light value? What of her shirt? Is it light at the shoulders, and middle at her chest? Is the man's shirt light value, on his sleeve? Because you've made it a middle value in the sketch.

That is basically it, Will.

You've got, I think, a pretty good handle on the concept, but you are not using it to its full potential by precisely and simply determining where the three values will be massed, and accurately showing that information in your thumbnail.

One more thing, show no detail at this stage. No features, no pockets, folds, etc.

Again, see Chris's example. Just masses...big masses.

Peggy

Peggy,

I think I get it now, and certainly some of the decisions become easier to make.

So below are a few more ideas I've played with. I'm leaning more toward the simpler ones.

As I consider value massing in art that I like by others, I find that simpler massing tends to generate a more positive response. This is a worthy lesson in my own compositional efforts.

BTW, I do realize these could be more refined.

Thank you for taking the time to help,

Will

Will,

Good job! Yes, I see you are getting the idea. It is so easy to get a feeling for where you want to go with these simple thumbnails. I like both the compositions on the right, the one on the left seems a little...isolated...

Peggy

Coordinating apparel
 

Will, I have a couple on my website here at SOG. Maybe it is one of the ones you didn't like, nevertheless I will give you some ideas that have worked for me.

If you have a background as complex as you are proposing, the couple should have clothing in closely related colors. They should form a strong single shape against the very busy background. Breaking up the colors too much, fractionates the composition. I think the overall shape of your figures are not dynamic enough, they should be bolder considering the drama of the landscape. I always go through my clients wardrobe with them before I start. I explain to them that their clothing is a very important part of the picture, it should be chosen for color harmony, suitability, and of course, personal style. If their clothes harmonize in some way it gives them also more unity as a couple.

Catherine Muhly is a very fine painter, her couple figure is lovely. However they are not up against a complicated background. You can get more complex figure arrangments against simpler backgrounds than against busy ones. Mary Cassat has a wonderful painting of a father and son, both form a unified black shape. Sargent did a son and his mother, both their outfits were different, but he had them against black.

I hope this helps. Sincerely,

Will,

In both the first sketch and the more completed value study posted next, you have lopped the legs off the bottom of the drawings. In painting with this intricate background and double subject matter, I don't think you can get away with a vignetted foreground. In which case, the bottom of the painting needs to be specifically delineated, gentleman's leg accurately represented as to how it will drop off the bottom of the portrait.

I also kind of like the idea of the tree trunk to the right be in a dark value sweeping to the man's vest and pants, with the rest of the background being a middle value, just to see what that would look like.

But there needs to be a bottom on your portrait.

Peggy

Sharon,

I've not posted back till now because everything was in limbo. But I just talked with them again and they have finally come to their senses. I'll be able to get up close and personal, do away with the big background, and take a peek at the whites of their eyes. Things are looking up.

Essentially, the goal is to portray these folks as though there is still some romance in their relationship, which in fact there is. It calls for a certain interaction between the couple that is more often seen in wedding photos than in formal portraits of couples. To achieve such a feeling of intimacy is my challenge in this effort.

If I have my way, it will be a very simple background.

I am starting to think educating the client is as much work as the painting itself. Sheesh! I wonder if we can charge extra for that?

To answer your implied question, I had not seen your couple. In any case, I was not making judgements, but commenting that none of the couple portraits I had seen at that point generated a resonance with me. I think this must be a very dificult thing to achieve.

Thank you for taking the time to seek out those examples.


Peggy,

Thank you for these good suggestions. Even though I won't apply them directly in this instance due to the change in composition, the lessons are not wasted. From reading your original post on the subject, I know I can apply all this even to a simple head and shoulders portriat.

I promise I will never again make a mistake involving 3-value massing. (And a chorus of voices issues forth from our speakers, "Riggghhht!")

You are being hired because your clients believe you know more than they do. Don't disappoint them. Have your way.

I know you mean this tongue-in-cheek, but let me answer you in a serious mode. It's your job to educate your clients. I keep an entire binder of other painter's work and their prices so that they can place my work in perspective. You have to let your clients know that paintings are not photographs. I actually make mine laugh and raise their hand to say "Paintings are not photographs!"

I spent the first four years of my portrait painting time failing to take control of the process, accepting poor resource material, letting someone else control format, sizing etc... You can avoid this mistake by starting now.

Question on color harmony
 

Thank you, Chris!

I think this is some of the best advice, which supports my theory that good advice doesn't care how much you paid for it.

It is my nature to dig in my heels and wrest control from whoever has it. Still, it's hard to do when you don't know all the pitfalls that must be avoided. I do know to take my own reference. I even recognise when my own reference isn't good enough, and then I arrange to take more, which is my next step.

But all that isn't a lot of use if I don't know what to specify, or how to arrive at certain suggestions.

So your advice begs a question.

If I had one client, I would use the color wheel to arrive at a background color, probably based on the clothing she was wearing, or maybe her hair/skin coloring. But now I have two clints to be in the same picture. They have very different coloration, which reflects in the clothing each wears. He as black hair, and likes to wear blues/blacks. She has dark auburn hair and likes to wear tans.

How does one arrive at a harmonious colors when the subjects are so disparate?

Will

I go into their closets with them. Seriously.

And I suggest guidelines up front: avoid tutlenecks (usually); avoid round-necked solid darks unless broken by a nice neckline or collar; look for fabrics that are soft enough to move with the underlying form; no plaids.

If one of them has strong feeling about what they want to wear, I will try to work around it if:

-it has a good neckline;

-I have the skill to paint it well (this will clearly exclude the organza blouse Princess Diana wore in Nelson Shanks's portrait!!);

-the fabric works well (for example, putting someone in a very starched dress shirt can be problematic, since the fabric moves with a life of its own); and

-I can control the second subject's choice.

Unless there were some underlying desire to paint in a given color harmony, I probably wouldn't make that decision until after I begin posing them, or perhaps during the planning phase before I begin painting. The color harmony you choose will gain its unity from the colors of light and shadow, and the overall painting from its value scheme. I am not sure if I have answered your question, Will; if not, please restate it.

Chris,
You have a masterful way of revealing a truth by denying it. Certainly your style would be different from Shanks', but the only thing standing between you and such a blouse would be your belief in yourself. There is not a doubt that given such an oportunity, you would rise to the challenge. You will hard pressed to convince me otherwise.

For me, on the other hand, every attempt at portriature is a challenge of that same magnitude, which is why I am so thankful for this forum.

You answered my question partially, but only because I probably don't know some stuff you might expect me to know. My problem is that I am self-taught by reading and experimenting. (In fact, my art education is so incomplete I still think that when something is painted, it should be recognisable, a precept mostly ignored by the cubists and other progressive thinkers.)

Anyway, my trouble is I don't have an inherent knack for colors, so I will have to learn some rules, then learn to apply them. Normally, I would use the color wheel and try to discern a suitable color scheme - complimentary, triadic, etc. But to my eye, the clothing of the couple does not come together nicely.

I will post a photo so you can see the colors. ***This is not my reference photo,*** but shows their color quite well. It's lit by only a window on an overcast day and the shadows are filled with a large white reflector.

You said,
Those words leave me feeling I missed the whole class except for the closing statement. Could you elaborate on the statement as one might apply it to this photo (composition aside?)

Hello Will,

Good luck on the portrait. I'd like to see it when it is finished. There are two things that come to mind when looking at it. I believe there can be potential pit falls, so I'd like to mention them. First, your photograph was taken indoors, with artificial lighting. The light was close to the subjects. An outdoor scene that you have sketched will require different lighting. Can you shoot a group of photos at the scene that you'll be painting? Will the commissioners let you paint an indoor scene that will work better with the photo you've chosen?

The other thought I had was one of human emotion in a painting. It is a personal thing with me, so forgive me if it's of no interest to you. I hope it can help though. Smiles must be done very well. If not they can look superficial. Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Ingres are artists that can teach worlds about creating emotion in a painting without going cliche or superficial. On thing common in each is that the models rarely smile. What is more common is a slightly up turned mouth that shows a positive state without pushing the "happiness", for lack of a better word in the portrait. Well, good luck with it. :D

Hi Will,

Looking at the photo sample you provided, the blue shirt is the only thing that looks a bit out of place, and much of this could be the photo itself. You could maintan the feel of the man's shirt by rendering it as a middle-light grayed down green. or even a white, if you choose a background that works with the resultant value patterns created by the high contrast of vest and shirt. Test this out with the value massing thumbnails. Her clothing is nicely neutral.

I like the use of what appears to me to be natural light, and of course, I don't know how closely this may resemble the resource photo you plan to use. However, if you plan to use an interior -shot resource, yet for the painting, place the figures outside, I think you will run into problems. Likewise, if you don't have full figure reference, or a good stand-in model, I wouldn't suggest inventing the remaining 75% of their bodies.

You need to make a decision about the temperature of your light source. Here, it is cool, and your shadows warm. If you keep the hues in shadow relatively warmer than the hues in light, the light will become more believable for your painting. (This would be the reverse with a warm light source.) Temperature unity also has to follow through in the background and everything else in the picture. The same thing holds true for color saturation: colors in shadows are less saturated than colors in light.

With respect to the color harmony, sometimes it helps to look at your resource in grayscale / black & white. You might consider an analogous color harmony here. I've included some info on Hal Reed's Analogous wheel (terrific tool). Here it just happens to have a dominant orange dialed-in, but of course, you can move it to any dominant hue.

You can order Hal's color wheel through http://www.artvideostore.com or call Art Video productions at 1-888-513-2187

Anthony,

Thank you for taking the time to comment.

As it happens, I'll be taking more photos after Christmas. I am hoping this will generate a harmonious reference that does not require a great deal of adjustment or patching together of different images.

On the matter of smiles - it is true that most of the old masters never painted smiles. I'm not sure why, but I agree with the prevailing opinion that it was because:

1) many subjects back then had bad teeth; and

2) most subjects can't easily hold a convincing smile as long as needed to paint it.

But now, we have cameras, and nice teeth, and our subjects like to show them off. The lady I'm working with simply looks much nicer with a smile than without one. She is known for that smile. A portrait of her without it would not really be a very good portrait.

And while smiles are more challenging, they are not impossible by any means. Nor can it be said that the old masters *never* painted them. Bouguereau did. It's clearly visible in his Nymphs & Satyr painting.

So, considering that I have both a camera to capture the moment and a subject with nice teeth, *and* she knows that she looks best with that smile on, I may have trouble maintaining my credibility with her if I try to get out of painting the teeth. In any case, they don't intimidate me. It is a simple truth that the smile takes me as long to paint as the two eyes do. The teeth are nothing more than small parts of a larger whole. I think I'm stuck with the smile.

When I'm done, I'm sure I will need to post that effort in the critique section, and you will have another opportunity to say, 'you should not have painted those teeth.' At that time, I will relinquish my bulldog grip on the matter and admit that you were right from the start. Then we will all have a good laugh at my expense.


Chris,

This is just the information I was hoping for. It will help me when I go back for more reference photos. And this time, I will get into their closet. I will be The Boss.

Thank you very much,
Will

Good luck and Merry Christmas Will,

I'm sure you'll do fine. Looking forwad to seeing the final result.

Merry Christmas to all on the Forum,
Anthony

Finally, after two months, I have buttoned down another photo session! I am pleased with the results, thanks in large part to Chris Saper's suggestion that I become the boss of the session, and much of the other good photo advice that is to be found on this forum.

I prevailed mightily upon them both to wear white. I spoke convincingly of high art, alluded to a skill set which I may or may not possess, and I now have their approval to paint a portrait rather than a landscape with a few figures in the middle distance.

Here is the reference photo. Will anyone offer suggestions before I proceed?

Will

Will,

What an exciting improvement! You have really clarified your values and composition.

You'll have some great opportunities to lose edges in the shadow side of the man's shirt.

The background you may wish to consider bringing up to a middle value, darker than the skin but lighter than the hair. It looks on my monitor to be a middle-dark grayed-down yellow green; even if not, I'd probably paint it that color anyway. I like the framed painting in the background; you'll want to watch out so it doesn't become a tangent with the outer curve of her hair.

This will be a fun painting for you to do, and I look forward to seeing it!

Very nice lighting, exposure, poses etc. Should be fun to paint!

Chris, Michele,

These responses are certainly more positive than I expected! I guess the wait and travail were worth it. I had three separate photo sessions to generate this photo. Only one conclusion can be drawn from this: All good things come to those who read the SOG portraiture Forum.

I failed to mention earlier that this was taken with my Minolta D7 digital camera, with which I am very happy. It has an option to bracket exposures by up to 1 f-stop, a handy trick that allows us to look into the shadows even after the client is gone.

Thanks for those encouraging words. Now I shall try to hold up my end.

Will, I've been following this thread with interest and have learned a lot as well. Your latest reference photo is beautiful; I like the colors and shadows you've achieved and it forms a harmonious whole. The only element that concerns me is his left hand; because his arm curves downward and his hand is so much lighter than her skirt, it keeps pulling my eye down and leading it out of the picture. If this were my painting I would try to make that hand curve so that it directs the eye upward and back into the painting for more visual adventures. You have a very appealing couple here, though, and it's going to be fun to paint them.

Will, Just another opinion here: I would not attempt to alter the position of the hand without visual information at the ready. If you feel his hand has too much dominance, (problems inherent in photographs), you can diminish it with desaturated color, soft edges, and slightly diminished value. Her hand, close in, will move forward with sharper edges and more saturated color.

Such impact is well demonstrated by Daniel Greene's auctioneer series. (Current in my mind this week.) When I get a moment I'll try to locate an image online.

Chris, I wasn't suggesting that Will fabricate a new position with no reference. I certainly would never do that myself. If none of the other photos from the session that day had a useful example of the arm in a better position then he might want to take another one just for that bit of information. However, as you mentioned, softening the hand somewhat would help.

Leslile, thanks I didn't think you were suggesting so, but just wanted to be clear.

Here's an image I have located. I plan to send for the catalog of this series, available through American Artist, Catalog Dept., 770 Broadway, NY NY 10003, for $20.00.

If I can locate a better on-line reference, I'll replace this image with the link. These are all fantastic paintings, in the Daniel Greene style, which he very clearly describes on his videos.

Leslie,

I had already decided to minimize that hand. I'll do it by rendering it in such a way that there appears to be less light falling on that whole lower area, much as Chris suggests.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Chris,

That is indeed a nice painting, and beautifully executed. But my untrained eye doesn't quite pick up the subtle differences you refer to with the softer edges and desaturated colors. I imagine the effects would be more visible at full size?

Will

Will, on my monitor the hand with the pointing finger is delineated in softer, subtler colors and the edges aren't as sharp. It doesn't jump out at you the way the other hand does.

Are you going to show us the painting as you begin it? It would be fun to see it progress.

Will,

You said you'd searched through SOG main site for couple paintings. I wondered if you knew that I had a gallery page specifically for couple paintings: http://www.portraitartist.com/couples.htm

This will help you zero in on any you might have missed. There aren't a lot of couples on the site and per my knowledge, not a lot in general painted.

Will,

What a nice story your project has become. I will send students to this thread in the future to see how much an idea can be changed for the better. The photo is full of good reference. I wouldn't have expected the white against white to work so well but it provides great shapes and interesting shades and values of white.

I like the position and shape of the hand and would agree that you might try a darker tone but not so much that you might lose the wonderful abstract shape it creates as part of the grouping of light shirts.

I would suggest eliminating the finger ends of his right hand. Otherwise there is confusion resulting in the appearance of multiple thumbs stacked up along the outline of her blouse. Be careful with the "whites" of the eyes also. They look too white in the photo. The little wing at the top of her blouse juts out rather abruptly. You may want to try a more drooping angle.

An opportunity to buy a Minolta D5 at a bargain price turned out to be an excellent purchase for me. I use the bracketing also and recently started using the custom white balance setting to get truer color. I hope I get as good results as you did.

Good luck with the painting.

Leslie,

I think I won't be posting any progress, since (my) watercolors look so bad in the unfinished state, and people would feel compelled to waste perfectly good critique on stuff that will get fixed anyway. I do hope you'll comment when I do post though; There will be plenty I missed, no doubt.

Cynthia,

It seems none of the thumbnails are linked to their respective paintings, which is OK. But many of the paintings displayed are not available by clicking through to the artist's sites either, such as the one by Margaret Sargent. Still it is a good resource, as I discovered a number of couples not listed in the couples page. Thank you for the link!

Jim,

Thank you for your encouraging comment, although none of that could have happened without the excellent advice from several others.

Thank you also for your suggestions on the multiple thumbs. I know I must be improving, since I actually noticed those, and decided not to include them.

Fortunately, the whites of the eyes show more accurately in my reference. The reflections in their eyes are so clear I can see some fleas having a domestic dispute on a dog that's barking in the neighbor's window. (You do believe this, don't you?) Had this been taken with your D5 rather than my D7, those fleas might have been mistaken for mosquitoes, and all our careers would be on hold while we figured out what mosquitoes were doing on a dog in Canada in January. Boy, I'm glad we dodged that one.

I appreciate all your comments,