Oil Painting on Cotton Canvas, May 2023
Reference and Inspiration:
Cold Open: Hans Landa vs. La Petite
I always liked the cinematography of the opening scene of Inglourious Basterds (2009), the seventh film by Quentin Tarantino. In it, Nazi colonel Hans Landa is introduced as a hunter of Jews being hidden in Nazi-occupied countries. One of the places they are hidden is the dairy farm of La Petite. I like this scene because it sustains about 10 minutes of tension with interesting dialogue, gestures, and not much else.
For this oil painting, I noticed how great the stills of the filmography were and decided to use this one as a reference. Some reasons:
- Lighting: It’s high contrast, which draws our attention.
- Angles: There are many diagonal lines and shapes that guide our eye.
- Subjects: They are different and uniquely interesting: Landa is neat, uniformed in the infamous dark green Hugo Boss-designed getup, and has predatory mannerisms; La Petite wears neutral-colored clothing, which seems symbolically appropriate, since he’s trying to keep his cool without appearing weak or rousing suspicion.
- Conflict: Their positions and body language aren’t the same and imply a subtle conflict, which I think is interesting to see (rather than two people sitting at a table but leaning back and staring off into space, etc). One acts predatory but not without charm. And the other is defending the predation all while acting receptive to the charm.
- Object Placement: One of the daughters is watching from the shadows, and that seems to implicate Landa as a threat. Also, there’s many soft impressions of fragile objects on a shelf over the villain and a bright window to the outside over the victim. Good symbolism: artsy-fartsy, but not unimportant.
It has a lot of good ingredients, reminding me of the Edward Hopper paintings that inspired Western cinema. Going forward, I definitely want to find more scenes like this to paint.
The Wash:
Lines, Darks, Lights with Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna (Brown)
This is one of the first washes I did for a figure painting. I was slow and anxious with it, and the wash began drying on the pallet. The brush began carrying “chunks” onto the canvas, and chunky paintings aren’t usually desirable. Hey, it was a learning experience.
Regardless, I can’t think of a better method for scenes with figures. I have artbooks on Caravaggio and Sargent and Vermeer, and I don’t know how one could replicate those interesting scenes (or movie scenes like this) without mapping it out with a wash first.
Process:
I used Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna. The darkest areas got the undiluted mixture. The mid tone areas got the mixture varied with paint thinner. I took a paper towel or cue-tip with paint thinner to remove the wash down to white canvas where I accidentally covered it. Otherwise, my brightest areas were left white or close to it.
I didn’t use a thumbnail sketch beforehand, and I should have. I’m happy with how the proportions and structure turned out, but they could have been more accurate if I’d figured it out in miniature with pencil and paper.
Blocking In Color:
Intentional Paint Mixing and Targeting Value-Shapes: Greens and Neutrals and Off-Whites
First off, the darkest shadows occupy so much real estate in this scene that my dark blue-brown underpainting already did the job. No more painting needed. I like doing less work, woot woot
The highlight colors (the table, tops of heads and shoulders, window) were mixed with lots of white as the base.
In the past, I used to mix every color-note starting with the Hue I saw first (Red, Green, Purple, etc.), which is a mistake for highlights. They are essentially off-white, and it's a waste of time and energy mixing them from the wrong entry point. Starting with white and keeping it dominant makes the mixing-and-matching more efficient. Very light colors are sensitive in mixing. Even the tiniest inaccurate dot of color can screw them up. I’m over explaining because I’ve screwed this up a ton…
La Petite’s shirt was one big neutral block in, which really helped in the long run. Later, I only needed to add tiny amounts of desaturated red and green to shift the main color so that it looked like folds. There’s really only three main sections of his wrinkly shirt if you blur your vision. It was a surprisingly satisfying part to paint.
If I had gotten the first block in color wrong, all the subsequent work would be harder.
What's on my pallet:
- Titanium White
- Burnt Sienna
- Ultramarine Blue
- Cadmium Yellow
- Bright Red
- Sap Green
- Viridian Green
Painting Challenges & Solutions:
Flesh Tones and the Shape of the Human Head; Studying Folded Fabric
The underpainting helped with the fundamental lines and angles in the piece. But not all.
Landa’s sleeve has all them squiggly folds. Because of those many shifts in angle, I had to meddle with it the most; When things fold and redirect, light hits them in different ways, and so there’s shifts in value and saturation to figure out.
In the end, this is a small canvas, so I left the blocked-in, oversimplified shapes; the viewer doesn’t need the distraction of detailed folds. I DIDN’T WANT TO PAINT THEM ANYWAY.
The next area of utmost meddling was their skin. Even though they're both white guys, their complexions are a little different. But what made it most challenging, as always, was the structure of their faces and how the light hit them or cast shadow (or bounced off a surface and indirectly hit them).
As boring as it sounds, the best help for this (for me) was studying my 3D rendering of a human head under similar lighting. Values of light and shadow are the same whether the hue is gray or fleshtones or hot pink, which I have to keep learning over and over. And our facial structure is fundamentally the same; there are just places its squished or stretched that make individuals look unique.
The second best help for me were flesh tone mixing tutorials, like this very organized method by Anna Wakitsch (highly recommend).
Final Impression and Lessons Learned:
Underpaintings Can Carry the Majority of the Work And, Fortunately, There Are Learnable Patterns to Fleshtones and Fabric Folds
I didn’t think about how this painting helped me improve until writing this.
First, the dark blue-brown underpainting saved me a ton of time. It’s one of the most valuable methods I’ve picked up for my painting. Not much more to say about that.
Second, the fleshtones changing with facial structure and fabric folds still intimidate me. But this painting forced me to look at how they work. I looked at other paintings of people and my 3D human head to understand the value and saturation changes of the skin colors (as well as the reference photo). And I studied a Morpho drawing book on fabric folding (highly recommend) over human forms to get a better understanding of the clothes. Not technically necessary since I was copying a reference, but, on the other hand, understanding the practical-physical reasons behind “why they look like that” really made me more comfortable and confident.
Thirdly, I find scenes of tension with people very interesting, and it works well for oil painting. I think using movie scenes could be good practice if a painter did want to make pieces like Caravaggio or Vermeer or whomever. Scenes of conflict remedy what I find boring about ordinary portraiture: more people in familiar poses and there’s an attention-getting interaction.
Probably, I will lean into this source for reference material in the future.
