Creating Mood and Atmosphere

For this exercise, we are asked to create a portrait that is unusual or expressive in some way (whether true to life or not).  We are asked to decide what we are trying to achieve at the outset.

Again, this will be a self-portrait and, sadly, came shortly after the death of my Nan in December.  I wanted to create a portrait which had references to my Nan and, as her name was Iris, I decided to concentrate on the Iris flower.  I also wanted the painting to be fairly ambiguous, and so not necessarily for the viewer to understand the link, but to think there was something a little unusual in the portrait.

I began my research by finding pictures of irises and paintings/prints including Irises, probably the most famous of which being Van Gogh’s two paintings of Irises (1890 and 1889). 

I also remembered a painting in the National Portrait Awards this year “Swallow” by Alexandra Gardner where a motif (in this case swallows) was used in the background, clothes and jewellery of the sitter and so became the dominant feature in the portrait.  A portrait in a similar style “Woman with a Flower” by Gaugain also interested me – both the composition and the sad, distant expression on the woman’s face.

Before I began the composition, I identified the main colours in the Iris flower – a purple blue and a bright, golden orange, which I created from mixes of French Ultramarine and Cobalt Violet, and Cadmium Yellow (Hue) and Yellow Ochre.  I tried mixing the two colours together to find the neutrals they created, but didn’t really like these at all – very dull green yellows, except for a very dark green-black created by adding just a little of the yellow to the blue-purple., which I think could be a useful dark tone.

I then created a couple of very quick sketches – one with my head and shoulders with a large Iris snaking up the side, which I quite quickly discarded, and a rough sketch of a figure seated centrally with iris motifs (fleur-de-lys) in the background. 

All sketches and prep work in sketchbook 2, marked with a blue flag.

I decided to expand this sketch further, and so began thinking about clothing.  I have a yellow winter coat, and so began to think how this colour mirrored that of the Iris petal.  Progressing with the winter theme, I added a scarf and then a cloche hat (fashionable this year because of Downton Abbey!) which then got me thinking about how the outfit referred back to the 1920’s (when my Nan was born).

I made a quick sketch of this and, having decided I liked the way the hat semi-obscured and cast the eyes into deep shadow, created a more detailed drawing on A3 paper, with the figure central to the paper.  I decided on a square format as I didn’t want either the figure or the background to dominate the painting – I wanted the space of both to be about equal.  Using a standard portrait background would have meant either making the figure much larger or giving over most of the canvas to the background.

I had two possible backgrounds in mind – both consisting primarily of yellow with Iris flowers.  The first was to repeat the Iris motif in the background, fairly large in size, and the second was to recreate Van Gogh’s Irises (1890) to fill up the entire background.  I quickly photocopied my drawing onto two sheets to try both styles – and I really liked both of them after colouring with oil pastels!  After much deliberation, I decided to work with the Iris motif in the background as I felt it was more unusual and the colours were more dramatic.

I then painted a test Iris flower in oils.  These were very dilute - I decided to work with transparent paint because I wanted the flowers to be very vibrant in colour but sheer and possibly a little faded, almost like watercolour. 

I liked the effect but, as the paint was just diluted with turps, I realised I needed to add linseed oil to allow the colour to flow better.  I also added a further layer of ultramarine glaze over the top when dry to add layers of colour and to make the flowers more blue.  I tested the yellow paint here as well – both in a think transparent layer, and then much more thickly with clear brushstrokes.  I felt the thin layer worked best here as it allowed the flowers to stand out much more than when competing with the thicker paint.

I transferred the image to canvas using a grid, overpainting with white acrylic and began with the first layer of the flowers, followed by the hat, hair and coat.  I want to keep the figure quite flat, but with thicker paint and minimal shading so the figure does not stand out too much from the background.   Unfortunately, the grid lines on the coat still show through – I wasn’t originally too bothered about the lines on the clothing because I intended to apply the paint thickly but I actually quite like the vibrancy of this first coat so a lesson learned for next time!

The glaze used was a mix of oil paint, turps and linseed stand oil, which allowed me to contour the flowers by applying pressure on the brush to create form, areas of very sheer and thicker colour.  The same principle was applied to the scarf, simply using pressure of the brush to create the folds of the fabric. 

The next session involved adding further layers to the coat, hat and hair.  At this point I decided the background yellow was too pale – as I had used transparent paint, the colour was very different and much more of a lemon shade.  As per my original sketches, I wanted the coat and background to be very similar so overpainted here with the same paint as used for the coat.

In my original colour sketches (paint/oil pastels over my photocopied sheet) I had left the face uncoloured and so monochrome.  I knew I didn’t want to introduce too much colour for the flesh tones.  It occurred to me that leaving the face more or less monochrome would be reminiscent of an old black and white photo, another reference to the 1920s. 

I began painting the face with a very pale shade (the yellow mixed with white) which I quickly decided was just too yellow, and so I added more white, with a lighter shade of that used for the hair/hat as the shadow tone.  This worked very well and does give the face, I feel, a very fragile quality.

Looking at the finished portrait, I feel it is both an unusual likeness and an exploration of colour/qualities of paint.  Although the figure is a straightforward representation of me, the unusual colours and motif background, combined with the monochrome face in deep shadow create a dramatic effect.  There is also a strong contrast between the solid opaque paint and the sheer transparent colours used.

I actually found this exercise relatively straightforward, once I had decided what to do!  Once I had settled on the Iris flower, all the other ideas (colour, transparency, etc) came from this.  The only things I would possibly do differently are: (i) used more layers of paint for the glaze (ie, blue, purple, blue again), as I think this would have produced more of a depth of colour; (ii) made sure the pencil grid marks didn’t show through the paint!; (iii) thought more about the placement of the irises in the backdrop – I deliberately left one of the irises out, but I am not sure whether this is a clear enough statement of intent, or whether the viewer will just thing that it is not balanced (still not made by mind up myself!).