The sunbeam child… the sequel… It is done!

August 23, 2023

Sometimes it takes multiple iterations to get to a satisfying painting. I used my summer course to give this project a fifth and final try and I am happy I did, because I can finally look at the result with pride and contentment AND I learned a lot about all elements of the painting process.

Is it really over two years ago I wrote the blog post ‘A tough subject’, a post dedicated to the same quest? You can click and read it, but let me summarize the story. I once took a photograph in the Nepalese Himalayas, knowing full well that it would not be very good. But even then, in the years of using film instead of digital imaging, I often used the camera to simply commit a scene to memory. The result was never meant to win awards and shots like these often came out blurry or badly exposed. As did this one. To the point that the very first shot never even got printed!

When I presented it to my summer-mentor, he was able to put into words how interesting that very first shot was in terms of composition and light. He was spot on. Come and have a look at it:

What attracted me to the above image was the fact that I was looking into a dark hut, in which… the sun was shining! Because it was so dark, the negative of this scene was vastly underexposed. It was only after I had lost the photo album of this 1992 trip and decided to scan the negatives, that it surfaced. And thanks to today’s digital photo processing, I was able to improve the exposure, and there it was: the situation as I remembered it. I was walking by and then stopped in my tracks and took a few steps back. It was extraordinarily beautiful to me. Yes, the shot is not level and there is an artifact in the bottom that is very distracting. But it did what I meant for it to do: it committed to memory what my eyes saw. Although… this shot never made it to print! Do you remember the days of photographs on film? The wait for prints for 2 or more days? Did you ever check the negative strips afterwards, to see if all images had in fact been printed? I did not often do that. And so the image above went unnoticed for well over 20 years!

The reason that the second shot, shown below, was in fact printed, was that it was of slightly better quality. For the first shot, I had to take my backpack off, get my camera out, change the lens and make the photograph. By the time I was done and ready to pack everything back in and continue my trek, all of a sudden this child jumped into the picture. I believe it to be a girl, based on the necklace she was wearing. She stood right in those sunrays and giggled loudly. So adorably, that I made a second shot, to commit this to memory as well. Still realising that, without a tripod and a fast film in the camera, it would probably not amount to an award-winning shot. Come and have a look at it:

Keep in mind that the above shot is the digital version. I was able to lighten it up quite a bit. Again: the only thing I saw in real life was the child. I never noticed the mother. She appeared on my computer as if I was developing a print in the old days – and I was astonished and delighted! In my fourth effort to paint this image, 2 years ago, I did not do a bad job (see the post I mentioned in the beginning of this post). I struggled least with the two figures and most with the sunrays. I am not an instinctive landscape painter. I am drawn by humans and animals. But of course they often appear against a background. And in most cases, the background of landscapes is easily distinguished as it it the main focus of such a painting. Not here though.

My mentor and I studied the background extensively. In previous painting efforts, I had made the choice to largely leave it out, because it was so difficult to paint in a realistic way. But this time was differen. We also discussed our options of how to best paint the sunrays. All of this, before I even touched a brush or grabbed a tube of paint. It became clear to me that I would have to start with the background, before painting in the humans. First, I painted the background without the sunrays. My narrative here is that I wanted the sunrays to be very transparent and reveal some of the background through the beams of light. If I made the rays part of the background, that could not happen. There remain many questions about the background structures. What are we looking at? The diagonal structure obviously is a flight of stairs. But where do the sunrays come from? What are the structures to each side of the image? I was encouraged not to overthink things and just trust my eye and my brush. And so it is that the background emerged:

My goal was to make the walls and the colouring as natural as possible. This was a hut that had plastered, painted walls in different shades of the same colour. The wood looked to be in its natural state. It was all dark. I created my own set of colours and went to work. The next order of business was to create believable sun rays. This took a while. I already knew that painting the rays in first, would look unnatural, even if I would put in some colour on top of them to simulate the background. Painting the rays on top of the background was the real puzzle. My mentor and I did several trials, but none appealed to me. And then it hit me. Airbrush! If applied well, it would create a smoky, transparent effect that would be hard to mimic with a brush. So this became the second layer of the painting:

And then, finally, the two humans could be painted in. I was not done after that: the scene required some adjustments, some parts were changed and omitted by way of creative freedom. But now, the final image is complete and drying on my table. Have a look and let me know what you think! And I mean that – much like other websites, my comments often contain spam messages that never make it to the published website. I keep hoping that this will change. So consider yourself invited to write a comment, or send me a private message via the ‘contact me’ section in the main menu of the website. I look forward to reading your thoughts!

As you can tell, this project was not a matter of spontaneously throwing some paint at a canvas and voilà, all done. In fact, it became a calculated and methodical process of finding out how to render the scene in a believable way. I even questioned whether I should really work on it for the fifth time… But in the end, even if this was not based on a grandiose photogenic scene, for me it was a matter of trying to bring to life a memory that has traveled with me since the Nepal trek in 1992. It was time!

There were many nuts to crack. It all started with studying the scene extensively and then creating the colour mixes and shades and preserving them in several Sta-wet palettes. Then followed the setting up of the composition in pencil. And painting the background. The actual painting process hit the ground running, because there was no guessing about which colours and shades to apply. The mixes were ready to go. Solving the puzzle of the sunrays took several trial canvases and practicing with my new airbrush device. Getting the right paint solution and applying pressure and distance to the canvas all played their role. And then the painting of the main figures was just pure pleasure to me. The likeness was not essential, as long as the ethnicity of the child came through clearly. I felt, now more than ever, that I remain, in my core, a painter of living beings and the challenge of creating a realistic representation of a human being is one that gives me great satisfaction.

But… I would not be me if I backed away from crossing new boundaries. So I have some new experimental works on my easels, that I will present to you on this blog in the next month(s) or so. You have to keep renewing yourself as an artist, instead of painting the same thing over and over, is my motto!

About the mentoring

I have mentioned my mentor in my previous post, but let me do that again. We are not done working together yet and I have multiple works started on the easel, but as summer draws to a close, the finish-line is in sight. His name is Will Kemp and you can find more information on who is he and what he does here: https://willkempartschool.com/about/

His website has a lot of interesting video trainings, that I would recommend to any artist who, like myself, wants to step out of their comfort zone and learn new things. It will for sure take your painting to the next level. Will is very good at motivating an artist to do just that and in his mentoring he has been thorough and committed, so that the summer course has become a true milestone in my artistic development. Plus: it was super inspiring and so much fun at the same time. What more can you ask for when it comes to mentoring?

I have done mentoring before, with a few artists, such as Susan Brooker from Seattle (a week of live in-studio sessions) and Jennifer Gennari from Drawing America (virtual training due to Covid). It was always a valuable learning experience, but I have to say that Will’s teaching style was especially delightful.

To give you a taste of what his teaching style is like, go to YouTube. Here is an example of what to expect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NwzhhK_0Uc