Author: jpantuck

This is my second color wheel mandala. My first was 20 years ago. This project teaches techniques from the old masters, helps you to see values (lights and darks), how to control the brush and how to mix colors. You focus on how to get clean edges and how to made smooth transitions.

The first step is to draw the shape with pencil or charcoal and fix it with a fixing spray or hairspray. Step two is to cover the whole canvas with a smooth layer of burnt umber using a wide brush and very little oil and then rub out with a cloth the areas that will be of lighter value changing your pressure on the rag as you go.

Step three is to use pure white with a soft bristle, straight edge brush making sure to overlap slightly on each pass.

Step four is to mix colors using the Zorn Palette- which is only 4 colors (ivory black, cad red light, yellow ochre and white.

The final step is to glaze which is to use the transparent colors over the painting to deepen and create more vibrant colors. I used, indian yellow, phthalo green, phthalo blue, ultra marine blue, alizarin, red oxide and brown oxide. White is used into the glaze to keep the values.

LA Art Tours is a company that offers group or private tours of the arts district in Los Angeles. http://laarttours.com/ Our guide, who goes by Shanduone, is a local street artist who was very knowledgeable about the history of graffiti art and the current street art movement. Highly recommend looking into the different types of tours this company offers. Lots of restaurants in this neighborhood too- we went to Guerrilla Tacos.

The Barnes Foundation is located in Philadelphia, PA. It is the collection by Dr. Albert Barnes, a medical doctor and scientist, who believed that art has the power to improve our minds and lives. He had his employees study art and philosophy as part of their work day. In 1912 he started collecting and forming an interest in modern art when his friend and curator came back from Paris having purchased the works of Van Gogh and Picasso.

The collection is in a beautiful building and has a restaurant surrounded by a garden. I went with a friend of mine and we discovered that “selfies” are not allowed. We did manage to take one.

The Norton Simon Museum is located in Pasadena, CA and is one of my favorite places. Check out https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/ The best part of this past visit was going with a guide who is an art historian, Clare Kunny. She has a company called Art Muse LA. https://www.artmusela.com/ that is made up of historians and artists who give private curated art tours in Los Angeles.

On this tour she highlighted her favorite pieces which included The Branchini Madonna by Giovanni di Paolo.

In a Villa at the Seaside by Berthe Morisot

and Still Life with Lemons by Francisco de Zurbaran.

Interior decorators can help with your art collection and with curating your home. Lori Dennis helped me create two art walls. My pieces are featured in her blog post below.

Mothers spread their wings to protect their babies.  She throws herself in front of dangers, removes obstacles, clears a path.  But life throws arrows containing anxiety, depression, heartbreak and illness that pierce the shield of a mothers love.  No matter how good the guardian some things are impossible to protect against.

The nose is located 2/3 of the way down the face. The brows are 1/3 , the bottom of nose 2/3 and the chin 3/3 (from hairline). The nose has two sides, an underside and a tip. Nostrils (the edge of the wings) line up with the corner of the eyes. Combine shadows under the nose. Do not paint black nostrils! If you must paint nostrils- they are more red than black.

The top lip will be darker than the lower lip. There is a bean shape by corners of mouth. The lips of made up of 5 pillowy shapes.

The mouth bulges out because of the teeth but never more than the nose. Nothing comes out further than the nose on the face. Teeth are hard to paint – if you must put in teeth they are very grey in color because they are in shadow- never white.

The ear is a hook shape. Block it in by drawing in straight lines. There is a “y” shape inside the ear and a bump outside it.

Ears are redder than the rest of the face. They are located from the brow to the nose on side of head.

For the neck/ shoulders- If you measure cheek to cheek this should be the approximate distance of each shoulder. For children their heads are bigger. On women the neck is thinner than on men. The trapezius muscle comes out of neck to shoulders. Collar bone is drawn in next. Draw through from one collar bone to the other so that they are even. Same with eyes- always draw through- don’t draw one and then draw the other.

The eye is essentially a ball in a hole. The whole area is in shadow.

The eyes are in the middle of the head – midway between the top hairline and the chin. Mark the keystone which is a trapezoid shape which starts the nose and separates the eyes. The eyebrow is the top of the keystone.

Tear ducts point down. The outer corner of eye is slightly higher than the inner corner. There is a 45 degree angle from top of brow (top of keystone) to tear duct. Top part of eye ball will be darker than bottom because it is covered by lid. Lashes and pupil blend together. Eye lashes are drawn as one mass in a ribbon shape. Do not paint individual lashes.

This past week I took a class with Stephen Bauman https://www.florenceacademyofart.com/faculty/stephen-bauman/

I learned most about the concept of value. All teachers talk about value but sometimes it takes one to finally make the light bulb go on. Value is the relationship of light to dark as it relates to the whole drawing but also to the immediate areas. For example, while drawing the model I had noticed that the values around the top of the face where lighter than the values around the bottom of the face. However, I did not see that in order to make the light values of the forehead pop out I had to darken the hair in relationship to the forehead. Changing the values around the face create shape. If the values are wrong the face will be flat.

The tools of graphite drawing were also a new challenge. There are so many kinds of lead, lead pencils, erasers, blending tools and papers. I loved the Mono Zero eraser pencils and playing with the hard and soft lead mechanical pencils.

This post is about the process. I think its fun and interesting to see the changes each sitting. I wanted to give up many times with this one but you learn when you struggle. Happy with the outcome.

One of the techniques of creating depth is to make the paint thicker when you want the part to appear closer to the viewer. I tried this with the blue sweater and was almost shocked when it worked. The figure definitely comes closer than the couch and closer still from the background. Background colors are also more muted and shapes less defined which are other techniques to create depth.

Keeping features like the mouth and eyes soft with the correct expression are difficult tasks. You can notice that when I first painted the mouth there were harder edges. The shapes of the mouth and eyes changed with each sitting.