by Anne E. Hall

 

In a dramatic demonstration, as taught to him by Allan Banks when he was just 14, Carl Samson showed how to advance a painting toward finishing by simplifying it through scumbling.

"Paint what you see, but inform what you see with what you know to be true," counseled Carl Samson to the painters gathered at the annual Savannah seminar sponsored by the American Society of Portrait Artists.For both the many students of Savannah College of Art and Design and the mature painters in the audience, the advice resonated. The demonstrations at the SCAD graduate painting center on Oct. 5, 2002, gave participants a first hand opportunity to learn about "The Art and Practice of Portrait Painting," particularly how differently two contemporary masters of portraiture paint what they see.

As part of ASOPA's commitment to education, ASOPA not only sponsors this regional meeting, it provides a valuable scholarship to a SCAD painting student, explained SCAD painting department professor Michael Brown and ASOPA President Arnold McRae in their introductions.

ASOPA Vice-Chairman Steve Childs opened the morning presentation with slides showing his studio in Winston-Salem, N.C., and examples of his finished portraits and figurative painting. As part of the discipline he has developed over his career, Steve works from life on noncommissioned pieces. Dancers offer him a great opportunity to paint models with awareness of movement and drama, and he has painted a long series of dancers over the years. To loosen up and hone his portrait skills, he paints landscape and always has a still life set up in his studio.

Steve Childs joined the roundtable discussion about successful portrait marketing methods. Earlier, Childs had demonstrated for the audience how to keep the model in position, to judge proportion, and to re-paint a less satisfactory passage.

Steve recreated his studio set-up to set the stage for his demo, right down to his selection of music. As he painted, he described the myriad of decisions he made, from choice of canvas, brushes and paint, to measurements of the model. Out of consideration for the audience, he painted his model larger than life on a 24-by-36 size canvas built by his framer. Beginning with raw umber marks to show the top of head and chin placement, Steve built the painting with color notes, warm and cool, explaining as he did the paints he chose to mix. He demonstrated for the audience how to keep the model in position, to judge proportion, and to re-paint a less satisfactory passage. In closing, he urged the painters in attendance to work from life to develop self-motivation and confidence.

ASOPA Chairman Carl Samson also showed slides of his studio in Cincinnati as he presented a talk on the painter Frank Duveneck. Considered by his contemporary John Singer Sargent to be the best painter of his day, Duveneck exemplified the ability to use every stroke to define form. The 1915 Pan American exhibition in San Francisco devoted an entire hall to his works in recognition of his prominence. After study in Munich and Paris, he influenced generations of Cincinnati painters, including the artist couple whose home and studio now belong to Carl. There Carl paints commissions from life sittings. He traces the heritage of his own painting methods through Gerome, Bastien le Page, Anders-Zorn, Carolus-Duran, Sargent, Paxton, Gammell, Lack and Allan Banks.

In a dramatic demonstration, Carl showed how to advance a painting toward finishing by simplifying it through scumbling. As taught to him by Allan Banks when he was just 14, this scumbling technique begins with scraping a dry painting with a cuttlebone to remove all thick juicy edges, removing the dust with a rag moistened with turpentine, and then applying a partly oily, semi-opaque, average value tone for the light and shadow values. Carl took a portrait of his wife Carol, which he had begun a year ago, and reduced it to two unified light and dark sections with this technique. Combined with a medium of stand oil, damar, poppy oil and turp, the two values he applied left the surface ready to work back into, and more importantly, showed the value of thinking as broadly as possible. Carol posed as Carl demonstrated the hierarchy of ideas underlying his painting method and brought the painting forward toward completion.

First, in Carl's method, is getting correct shapes; next is interpretation of form and value; and last is color. Because the scumbles he applied were semi-opaque, the painting's previous stage was faintly visible, but Carl was more concerned with observations he made in the moment. In the sight size method he uses, he placed his easel next to the model and stood far back to observe, compare, mix his paint and decide, then moving forward to place each stroke. He emphasized the importance of knowing what to leave out. Working the whole surface, judging what is the furthest thing wrong, and correcting it step-by-step is a process he compared to a shepherd minding his flock, making sure that any stray is immediately restored.

"There is no room for timidity in portrait painting," he quoted from Richard Lack, and his painting ably demonstrated that.

The evening session of the program included a marketing roundtable and a critique. In addition to Steve and Carl, members of the Portrait Society of Atlanta collectively contributed their experience in successful portrait marketing methods through results of a survey I developed and presented in the roundtable. Among the most revealing findings of my survey of the Atlanta group was the importance of web sites for our portrait artists; it is the third most frequently used marketing tool after price lists and portfolios. Steve and Carl agree that word of mouth is their most important source of commissions, just as for our artists, and emphasized that portrait artists work as hard developing a presence in their communities as they do on their painting skills.
For more information on the Savannah College of Art and Design, visit their web site at www.scad.edu; on artist Steve Childs, www.stevechilds.com; on activities in metro Atlanta, www.portraitsocietyofatlanta.org.
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Anne E. Hall is the Publicity Chair for The Portrait Society of Atlanta.

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