2 Hour Portrait Painting Demo with Ken Goshen

Welcome back to the studio. If you're new, I am Slough. Really exciting video today. Ken Goshen is coming to do a paint demo. He was on the podcast a few weeks ago. He's a wonderful artist, an amazing instructor as well, based in New York City. You know, we just set up the studio to kind of have this live portrait demo, me modeling. We do it for two hours, so it's an Alaprima portrait sketch. Six 20-minute sessions of painting and me kind of sitting as still as I possibly can, but I think it's a rare opportunity to kind of, you know, hear a really weathered, amazing artist talk and paint at the same time. It's every single stroke. Some of it is sped up, but it's just wonderful. Ken is so knowledgeable and passionate, and so it's a really great, you know, 30-minute video if you have the time to watch a full painting process and to hear him talk. You know, Ken's great. If you want to learn more about him and dive deep into his lessons, because he's an awesome instructor on social media, everything is linked on his website, and it's all in the description, so go check him out if you want to learn more with Ken. Yeah, longer video, really epic, really exciting. I love this stuff, and hopefully we'll do more demos, but we must first thank the sponsor of today's video that allow me to make these videos. It makes it all possible to put on YouTube for free, so thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring the video. Squarespace is an all-in-one, dynamic, epic, amazing website building platform. It's by far the easiest and best way to make a professional-looking website. With their award-winning templates, it's never been more effortless to create a captivating website. All you really have to do is take your photos, your videos, or whatever you have content-wise, and just drop them into their templates, and poof, you have a super legit website. I think it's pretty obvious that it's vital to have a website in 2021, especially if you're an artist trying to promote your business. Squarespace's commerce platform supports any way you want to do business. You could sell your work directly online with customizable e-commerce templates, or bill for your own design services. I think as an artist, using Squarespace as a website can dramatically change your trajectory without a doubt. You could go to squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, you could go to squarespace.com forward slash slew for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. It's pretty awesome. Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. All right, so we're starting this process, and first thing I want to do is just get a basic structure onto the page. So for that purpose, I'm using my willow charcoal, and the reason I love willow charcoal, as all my students may be tired of hearing by now, is because it is so incredibly erasable. So there's really no consequences if you're making horrific mistakes at the beginning of your process, because as you're going to see, this thing is super duper fluid. So this is my goal for this first session, to get something on the page that has proportions that I'm happy with, but that is also very, very simple. We're not going to try to go detailed with this, because that is not the goal. The goal is to have a design, a compositional design, by that I mean how I'm going to treat my format, you know, the size of the head in the context of this particular surface. I want to know how that is going to look like, that is my goal. So I'm not dealing with like eyelashes, or you know, the nostrils and all these details you see me, just blocking in really, really large shapes. So the general shape of the head, you know, the ratio of how wide to how long, right, we have a specific angle here where Slew is sitting on a chair, so he's a little bit taller than I am, so I'm going to try to make it look like we're looking at this figure a little bit from below. That has, that's, you know, for that, for that to work, you have to be really sensitive to the divisions and the proportions of the face. Like for example, if you're looking at somebody from below, their forehead is going to look way smaller than they would otherwise, when if you would look at them like straight on, and vice versa with the jaw, right, the jaw is going to look bigger because you're looking at them from underneath. So basically, the foreshortening here is going to be the the challenge in this design, because Slew's forehead usually is like his, is a very, um, it's, it's a big part of his likeness, that shape of the forehead, but looking at him from, from this particular angle, makes it look a lot less prominent. So we're gonna have to see how we, how we deal with that issue. This is, now I'm measuring roughly the angle between the eyebrows, and this angle is going to be really important, because it plays with the angle of the mouth, and it plays with the angle at the bottom of the chin. These things that are, uh, how would you say, parallel, that's the English word, parallel, end up remaining pretty much parallel, no matter the foreshortening, and no matter the angles, right? But they're going to be tilting, as opposed to just being straight, as we would be seeing them normally, if we were just talking to Slew casually on the street. And now I'm just putting these big broad lines out there, just to try to find another compositional, um, goldmine, right? So we have this shadow on the face, dividing the planes of the face, and amazingly enough, it's almost parallel to where I'm going to put the side of the nose. So that is a, that is an opportunity, right? Because it's not that these lines, and also the line of the nose, is what I'm doing here, right? It's not that these lines are parallel with everybody. It's something that's unique to not only his face, but his face at this angle, with this uh, tuning of the light source. So you always want to be attentive to interesting relationships between shapes, uh, because that's going to make your painting look better. So there's, there's a whole set of ambitions that go beyond just making the painting look like the person. Uh, you also want the painting to be good, because you know the museum, right? If you go to the Met, uh, the whole museum is full of paintings that probably look like the people, but they're not all equally interesting. The ones that really stand out are those who who also have something additional to offer, and by that we mean good design, you know, good ideas when it comes to how you're dividing the shapes throughout the format. So we're going to be working on that for this, the duration of this specific session. Okay, so what we're going to do now is we're basically going to take all the shapes we've made so far, and by using a more precise device called a brush, we are going to do a better job defining, defining them such that we can start painting. And the color that I chose to use for now is raw umber, but I'm pretty much regretting it kind of immediately. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a cocktail that is not as dark as raw umber, and the reason why raw umber is a very traditional color that is used for this kind of technique is, first of all, it's dark, so it's suitable for capturing the shadows, and second of all, it dries very quickly, which is great, because when you're putting it down like this with some solvent, you don't want the whole thing to become a soggy mess forever. So having a pigment that dries quickly is very useful for that reason. And also it's low chroma, it's very neutral, so it's not like I'm doing this with cadmium orange and then everything is going to have such a strong coloration that I'll never be able to overcome. It's a delicate, you know, mild color. It's not overpowering, it's not overwhelming, so it's just extremely user-friendly in that regard. And as you can see, my brush is almost like a broom at this point, and I'm going to start hinting at a little bit of the coloration. I might regret this move, but I'm making a slightly redder version of the same color. And already in this underpainting, I'm going to hint ever so delicately at some of the color relationships. So I was coming at the bottom of the nose with this, you know, very, very gray cocktail that I made previously, and I thought, man, that is so unnatural, because this area is so pink that if I put raw umber in here, I'm going to shoot myself in the leg. It's going to be really difficult to bounce back from such a different color statement from what I actually expect to see there in the end. So I'm just putting a little bit in there for good measure. And now my underpainting, which is conventionally done just by using one color, usually some kind of umber, is seamlessly transforming into more of an ebouche. I love, this is like the part I so love. What I really love about just standing there and mixing color on the palette is that there's like no consequence, right? You don't think about every stroke I make on the painting, I'm later going to have to live with it, like whether or not it works or it doesn't work, it's going to be something there to deal with. But when you're just mixing color on the palette, you know, nothing's happening to the surface of the painting. So it's almost like taking a break where you are responsible for just one thing, just observe closely. I'm going to start by putting the lighter colors on using a pretty big brush. I want these to be fairly chunky. And also, I pretty much only mixed light colors right now because we have the darks more or less taken care of by the underpainting that we made. So now the most pressing affair becomes starting to express how those light shapes are interacting. And over here where the forehead starts to turn, I don't want to make too much of a sharp edge along the contour. I want to make it feel like there's a back of the head if you keep on traveling along that plane. So I don't want to make it too graphic. And then over here where it starts to meet the bridge of the nose, chroma drops, value drops. Maybe not by this amount. So I have a kind of gray, grayer version of this value. And I'm no longer using any solvent. So if you're seeing this go transparent, which you are, this is now the responsibility of medium. And the reason why is because now I'm making marks that I expect will stay as they are, not dry and change on me. So when you're trying to make the final mark and the transparency is not a kind of operational decision, but an aesthetic decision, that is when medium will become very important and solvent will cease to be in any way useful. So something people want to perhaps pay attention to is a lot of times when people have facial hair, even if they aren't blonde, like this doesn't just happen with Slew's hair, it happens with my hair too, those areas with the five o'clock shadow, semi beard, tend to be greener than we expect. So this is a fun opportunity. A lot of this painting revolves around areas of the face that are pink and areas of the face that are more green. The two of them, because they're complementary color, you have a lot of tension between them. So by focusing on this dichotomy, we end up adding a lot of color drama into the piece just by giving that relationship room to play out. The way that the light is set up right now, we have a direct light source, which usually creates a very high contrast if it were just the only light source that we were using, but we also have ambient light source coming from the light that's coming from the ceiling. And that light does a lot to significantly reduce the contrast. So we're not in Caravaggio territory, where the color of the shadow is extremely, extremely dark. We are closer to being in Degas territory, where the shadows are actually just a mid-tone. No, it's kind of like the question to me sounds like, you know, do you prefer Indian food or Thai food? I can't, you know, some days I want Thai food, some days I want Indian food. They taste totally different and they're all, you know, wonderful in their own way. So for me, the value arrangement throughout the design is one of the most interesting things that you could be deciding on when you're designing a composition. So I never presume to know in advance whether or not my colors are going to be high contrast or like very delicate. That usually is something that ends up determining whether or not I like a particular pose or not, because something happens with the light and I could say something like, oh man, the lights are so contrasting. I haven't done that in months. So now it becomes totally appealing to me because it's been so long. But then on the other hand, if you just end up doing for many, many, many paintings, you just have very strict separation between deep darks and very bright lights, then something comes along where the contrast is much lower and you actually see, you get to play more in the mid-tones, right? It's not just light or darks. It's like there's a lot of tension in the middle areas that you can play around with. That can be very appealing. So it's all a matter of like what I did before. And then usually in the next painting, I often find myself bouncing back and forth between approaches just to keep it interesting. You're up here, you're comparing colors. There's no, like the inefficient of always switching. Yeah, there's a more direct connection, you know? Totally, I can totally see that. We're creating a system that you're trying to maintain in balance. And it's difficult when it looks one way on the palette and then another way on the painting. Very difficult. By the way, this is the same reason why I don't work on white canvases. You know, we're coming in here and my canvases are middle value because as soon as I put down a dark value on my surface, I want it to look dark. And as soon as I put something light on my surface, I want it to look light. And that is the purview of a middle value object to make lights look light, darks look dark. Everybody goes home happy. Again, same thing that I was saying about the lips. I'm thinking the exact same thing about the eyebrow. I don't want the eyebrow to feel like it's an emoji, like it's pasted onto the portraits. I want it to feel like it's an integral part of the rest of the phenomena. And it came out a little overly green, so I'm just taking some Venetian red with some medium and doing what I seldom do, mixing it a little bit more on the surface, adding that red in there. To neutralize this unnecessary greeniness. And then again, I'm taking some of the colors of the lips and putting them into the eyes. Nobody's going to know. And it's going to promote the harmonic structure of my piece if these colors are not alone, they repeat, they have friends and family, and they feel more connected. So now that the solvent dried up a little bit, I can actually come back to those areas and manipulate them, which is really nice, very fun. So I'm gonna take this opportunity to fix up these moments here that I've neglected for the majority of the session. My plan is to use this session to kind of block in the areas that I haven't really gotten to, and then to spend the last session going back to areas that are still lacking, and to make them as good as luck is gonna allow. And right now I'm not using any more solvent, I'm just achieving the transparency by spreading the paint thin. And this is something that Slu and I discussed, makes things feel chalky, but it won't feel chalky if you avoid putting opaque pigments into that mix. If you just work with transparent colors, you can usually stretch them out and they're gonna just be fine with it. So the chalkiness is a result of over-stretching, over-extending pigments that are meant to be opaque. And of course, it's very important to keep the edges between the hair and the background pretty soft, since you don't want it to feel like the guy's wearing a helmet. You want to make it feel like it's a soft material. And soft material, soft edge. Measuring the height of the ear based on the nose. And this is something that moves a lot, because when somebody points their face downwards, of course the ear goes up. And if they point their face upwards, the ear goes down. So there has to be a time to make that decision of where exactly is it going to be. And I'm running out of time, so it has to be now. Yeah, I was trying to figure out what was bugging me with the structure of the nose. And I kept on thinking about it, from the top down, from the top down, checking all the shapes. And then sometimes, when you check the shapes by doing a survey top to bottom, and you can't identify the problem, what you should be doing is then go bottom to the top. So I was like, okay, I'll start with the bottom of the nose, and then look what's going on when I gradually go up. And suddenly I was like, oh, all these shapes could be different. So yeah, late discovery. We'll see what we can, we'll see how we can adjust it. So we're gonna go with taking the value range one step higher. I'm gonna take a little risk. So basically just creating a color that's lighter than anything we've mixed so far. I'm trying to see what would happen. If we bring that into the mix, that would be a little crazy, but hey, only live once. Okay, so what we're gonna do now is after we've spent the two hours painting this, Sloop is now the cameraman. So that's why the camera is moving and all. And I'm gonna take this opportunity to flip the painting on its head, which helps me get a fresh perspective on it. That's one benefit. And the other benefit is that it allows me to do things that left-handed people do. You know, it's like come in from this direction. Since I'm right-handed, making this kind of stroke is just extremely difficult. But when I come at it from this direction, it just becomes so easy to do a better job at refining this contour, which I was not able to do. So it kept getting out of control for me just because it's hard to make that, biologically hard to make that happen. In many, many years, when both me and Sloop are dead, people are gonna hopefully look at these portrait paintings and they're just gonna appreciate them for what they are. You know, today when we look at old master paintings, we can't know for sure whether or not they captured the likeness perfectly. And what we use to estimate whether or not the painting works is aesthetic values, right? Does it look good? Does it feel good? And these are things that you can definitely achieve without the model. So if you are either not afraid to ruin the likeness, which, you know, is a valid concern, or alternatively, if you feel like you haven't even gotten the likeness very well, which is kind of where I am with this right now, then at least if the painting is not gonna be successful for its tremendous likeness value, at least you're gonna improve the aesthetic merits of the piece. And that's no small feat. That's very significant. All right, everyone. So hopefully you enjoyed this demo. This was really fun. So thanks Sloop for the invitation. I really enjoyed coming here. And thank you for modeling. If you wanna get more of my stuff, you can go to kengoshen.com. There you can find my lessons, my Patreon, my Instagram, all that good stuff. That's kengoshen.com. That's it. See you next time.