Artwork Series: Learning From Lautrec

My appreciating how wonderful, gorgeous, and evocative Toulouse-Lautrec's artistic expression is does not completely inspire me, because at times his art lends a discouraging perspective giving forth to the nagging, internal question, why bother? My work has so much less quality and oomph. But there's opportunity as precious as his talent, a chance to learn, to improve, and perhaps advance to my own level of excellence. Two of his works, At the Moulin-Rouge: Goulue and her sister (1892) and The Toilette/The Redhead (1889), are the ones that I have interpreted recently. His medium was colour lithography for the former/oil paint on cardboard for the latter; my renditions were done with colour pencils (the very excellent Faber-Castell polychromos) on inexpensive paper. Such paper is good for everyday practicing though I do use high-quality paper for original work. As seen in the below photo, Lautrec is masterful in making one person's positive feature someone else's negative space as in the background's gentleman directly to Goulue's left whose black attire shapes Goulue's shrugging left shoulder. Another example of his wondrous manipulation of space is the shaping of Goulue's shrugging right shoulder is accomplished by the nose of the man directly to her right! This visual cleverness would have been wasted on me if I had not drawn my version.

Lautrec's lithograph: the woman on Goulue's right wasn't her sister, but a can-can dancing colleague,  Môme Fromage (translation: cheese-loving kid!)

I chose to make my version larger though it is challenging to increase the scale while trying to capture proportions among the elements in the picture plane, because it is also a way to push my development by making my drawing more difficult to do.

His of course has the characteristics of a lithography, smooth texture with sharply outlined forms, mine has patchy colour and softer delineations. (Lautrec's is on the left, mine on the right.)

The aspect that drew me to this lithography was the staggering insouciance of Goulue's posture as if there was no one else important but her in the room. Various aspects contribute to her lack of interest in others such as her tilt of chin, her hand defiantly planted on her hip, and her shrug emanating such disdain that it comes as close to a physical slap in your face without being carnally combative. That shrug was not captured perfectly by me, but it came close enough. (Lautrec's is on the left, mine on right.)

The second work, The Toilette/The Redhead, is nothing short of magnificent. I love the colours he used, among others, the blues both warm and cool; I love the rumpled fabric of her clothes and background draperies; I love her hair, especially her slightly unraveling chignon; I love the helter-skelter placement of all the components, from her slightly forward leaning torso to the chair, table, and bathtub; I love that the light is coming from behind her.

My version below got some of the aspects that I found alluring.

Her figure was much more forward leaning because I deviated from the plumbline that I had drawn down her centre. Her lower leg, clothed in a stocking, was less foreshortened. (His is on the left, mine on the right)

My incising the floor area under the chair with a rounded tool before I did any colouring resisted any pigment therefore giving the impression of floor boards. Same technique was used for highlights in her hair.

His (the below left photo) had less pronounced floor boards and a hair bun proportionally smaller than mine (on the right).

Lautrec is an excellent teacher and I am a half-way decent student!

À la prochaine!

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Artwork Series: Faber-Castell Polychromos Pencil Drawing of Two Desert Roses

Artwork Series: Faber-Castell Polychromos Pencil Drawing of Two Desert Roses

After a long hiatus, I am once again doing art on a steady basis. At present, I am getting up to speed on a medium that I haven't ever done, that of coloured pencils. Most days during the last two months I have practiced with top-of-the-line pencils (oil-based Faber-Castell Polychromos), but with inexpensive paper. I chose my various subjects from a notepad cover, my own photography, an art book of Toulouse-Lautrec's work, and a Pinterest board of mine, titled Drawing Ideas. I also watched some videos such as The Virtual Art Instructor among others. There are so many fantastic artists showing how they do art plus they respond to questions in the comments section! I remember back in the day when I would take nightly art classes after my full-time library job was done, what all the instructors, with the rare exception, would do were to walk around, saying nothing. On the other hand with YouTube artists I don't need to sit through a boring class as I can stop watching the video plus I didn't waste time going to and from a lacklustre course. Additionally I can switch teachers without a hitch, and they can be offered patronage if so desired.

Final Draft

After familiarising myself with the medium and feeling more confident, I was ready for an upgrade to high-quality paper, specifically, Clairfontaine's pochette dessin, papier blanc à grain, 224g/m2, A3. With the aide of The Calm One, a sheet was carefully and neatly halved. The lush colours laid down like velvet on the plushy paper! Once that initial delirium passed, all kinds of problems began to pop up, but I knew the paper was resilient enough to take on those challenges. What visually grabs you in your subject is what precisely needs to be captured.  My being instantly smitten by the below photo was because of several characteristics—the exquisite buoyancy, close to weightlessness, throughout the picture plane; silky smooth petals contrasting against the fuzzy texture of the sepals; plumpness of the roses; the warm colours of blue-green and peachy-pink set against a cool, dark background; specific details like dew drops/sharp light and dark contrasts/fuzzy little hairs edging the sepals & petals; five levels of distance, starting from the nearest to the farthest:

• 1. lower, larger rose
• 2. higher, smaller rose
• 3. the two stems
• 4. blurred leaves
• 5. dark green background

Pinterest photo from which my drawing is based

Basic preparation goes a long way such as practising on a separate piece of paper the effects I wanted to achieve along with choosing the appropriate colours by holding individual coloured pencils close to the subject. For those that came near to a good match, I made a colour menu, keeping in mind some of them might need to be deleted and some added as the drawing progressed.

I lightly drew the subject with a HB pencil. A good deal of time was spent to get placement and form as close to the original as possible which necessitated a good deal of erasing. On with the colours! Eventually my drawing advanced to the stage represented by the below photo on the left. How did I get to the final result shown by the below photo on the right? By spending nearly as much time refining it that I did to get a reasonable facsimile, albeit, a dull one, in fact, downright gloomy. Why was it like that despite being a decent rendition of the subject? The roses themselves lacked a contrast between light and dark while the background was much darker which competed for attention. The background was lightened by adding white and lifting off colour with facial tissues/an eraser to a certain point which was not enough to make the background less dominant. My guess is instead of layering black with dark phthalo green, if warm grey V (274) was used, the colour would have been light enough. Therefore, the roses needed to be brightened to hold their own. After more colours were layered on, mostly carmine rose and cobalt green, they were smoothed with the less vigorous blending stump so as not to lift off too much of the added colour.

The upper stem's thickness was made less to match the lower one by fading more of its edge into the dark background. Baby oil was used all over not only for additional blending but also to bring out the vibrancy of the oil-based pigments even more.

There are several ways to highlight details. One method is incision which is pressing the paper with a tool with a rounded point. To replicate fuzz/moisture under the rose's tip which remarkably resembles a dolphin's mouth, I applied dots with a deadbeat ballpoint pen. Though there are purpose-built tools, I figured since I share our abode with the deadbeat ballpoint champion collector of the world, that it wasn't necessary to get a special gadget. When the colour is put on, it doesn't fill in the marks, leaving a trail of visible white dots. Another way to highlight is scratching the paper with the colour already drawn in with a craft knife. That is how the slightly longer 'hairs' were done above the rose's tip . . .

. . . and along the sepals.

Yet another highlighting technique is lifting colour with erasers which are available in kneadable form (so a particular shape moulded by the artist can lift that exact shape), squat little sturdy rectangles that can be kept clean and somewhat shaped by rubbing them against rough sandpaper, and delicate eraser tips held by a holder. The strong highlights on the lower rose was first made by outlining their shape with a HB pencil and then steering clear of that area when applying colour. A light film of colour eventually drifts into any uncoloured area, so the highlights had to be made more evident by erasure.

The dewdrop on the upper rose's tip was made with both colour and scratchings. Since the light is coming from the left side, the strongest highlights needed to be on the left side of the dewdrop. The bulging bit in the middle of the rose was made more pronounced via shading.

Darker carmine rose accents and cobalt turquoise was shaded in to make a sepal look like it was pulling away from the rose.

Was I satisfied with how it came out in the end? Despite not rendering the subtlety throughout the picture plane, that is, one of graceful cheerfulness, because the roses finished being much more vibrant than their background, I did accomplish all the other aspects which I found alluring in the photo of two desert roses. In addition, I now know how to simulate a whispering of colour permeating the entirety of a drawing which requires keeping the contrast less demarcated by maintaining the background and subject in tonal values fairly light to moderate. Keep in mind, a flat subject melding into a dark background as in my first version, appearing foreboding and a bit mysterious, could be used if that effect is desired. My final version was neither one of lightness or gloom, but more dramatic, resulting from a pairing of a moderately toned background with bright subjects. Being familiar with as many perspectives and techniques will allow me to grow as an artist.

À la prochaine!

Polychromos colour pencils used for this drawing:

White, 101
Cream, 102
Warm grey II, 271
Cobalt green, 156
Cobalt turquoise, 153
Geranium lake, 121
Rose carmine, 124
Deep scarlet red, 219
Earth green, yellowish, 168
Dark chrome yellow, 109
Dark phthalo green, 264
Black, 199