Édouard Manet and Victorine Meurent

“Every new painting is like throwing myself into the water without knowing how to swim.” Édouard Manet

Victorine Meurent was Édouard Manet’s favorite model. She crops up everywhere: Olympia, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, The Railway – the list goes on and on. There’s even a painting of Victorine dressed as a Matador. She was an artist in her own right, part of the Paris art scene and even had paintings accepted at the prestigious Paris Salon – No “Salon des Refusés” for Victorine!

In all of Manet’s paintings, Victorine looks slightly different. Manet had a way of caricature-izing her features and I took to musing about what she really looked like. I started a study from a period photo in one of my painting classes and then thought I’d continue on for a while. I ran into trouble because the harsh contrast on this and other period B&W photos make poor references – she looked different in every photo! I could not easily reconcile the photos with any of Manet’s paintings – and referring to paintings purporting to be her by other artists of the time threw me into total confusion.

My painting may or may not look like Victorine and I’ve decided that trying to establish a forensic likeness from multiple sources is a good exercise in futility. That said, I do quite like my study and I quietly suspect I might have captured something!

 

The classic three-quarter view

Perhaps the most common view in portraiture, the three-quarter view poses some specific challenges. As the head turns from a straight-on, full face view with the front of the face thereby swinging to the side, some effects can surprise and catch you off guard:

The key ideas I keep in mind are:

The distance between the tip of the nose and the corner of the far cheek is an important measure: we humans seem to have a notion that the nose is in the center of the face and so subconsciously position it too centrally in a three-quarter view. Protruding out in front of the face, the nose will swing around to the side like a weather vein as the head turns.

It is invariably tricky to capture the dynamics at the far side of the mouth and its external physiology. The contours forming the almost coincident upper lip and far cheek can be tricky to see, let alone differentiate effectively.

The positioning of the ear is important in any three-quarter view. It underpins both the amount of turn and perspective: whether you are looking up or down on the subject. Look carefully at the distance from the eye to the ear and also horizontally, assessing where the ear is in relation to the eyebrow and base of the nose.

Exercise

1. If you have not tried a three quarter view portrait, now’s the time to have a go at one! Either in paint, or with dry media, lay out a portrait with this perspective.
2. Go back through your previous studies and look at the nose to cheek relationship on portraits where you have an oblique view of the sitter.

 

Tips for painting the mouth.

John Singer Sargent said: “A portrait is a painting with something slightly wrong with the mouth”. Perhaps more than any other part of the portrait, close observation of the landscape around the mouth, including upper and lower lip areas and outward towards the cheek, is key. The following study shows my typical approach to the mouth area:

I keep the following in mind:

1. The upper and lower lips are different, one or the other invariably predominating.
2. I treat the upper and lower lips differently, the upper dark as the lip is often trapping light, the lower light as the lip is in full light and often reflecting it. Take a look through the Reference Gallery and you’ll see what I mean.
3. I never paint the lips a different colour from the skin, at least initially. There is continuity of form and that’s what I strive for, layering some warm onto the already built shapes and forms.
4. There’s a lot of action in the corners of the mouth, slight creasing – upturns and downturns all add character. As a minimum, I make sure that the corners of the mouth are dark. This helps the mouth turn into three dimensions and pocket in the corners, otherwise it risks looking flat.
5. Likewise, the center line of the mouth offers some great opportunities to find character. I never paint a solid line. Rather, I look for where the upper or lower lip predominates and use the boundary between upper and lower lip to capture this.
6. Finally, I form the fullness of the lower lip by creating the shadow area below the lip and above the chin. I find this works better than trying to show this with line, or manipulating highlights.

Tips for noses

Noses are perhaps the area where, above all “Value is King”. There aren’t really any lines to get your brush to, except for the top boundary of the nostril. The following portrait shows my typical approach:

I proceed the following way:

1. I look for the shadow area under the nose, both on the nose itself and on the upper lip area. In many lighting conditions this will be quite prominent. Capturing this, probably more than any single factor, sets the stage.
2. Working around the side of the nose, I look for subtle changes in tone to explain the shape. This approach spreads well into the cheek area and eye sockets too. I am rarely just “painting the nose”, but rather implying the nose in the overall landscape of the face.
3. Oftentimes, there is more shadow on one side of the nose than the other and this is a great opportunity to help define the overall structure of the nose. In fact, I will emphasize and even create this effect with washed-out lighting to underscore the form.
4. The nostrils themselves are typically sharply dark at the top and diffused toward the bottom. The shape and spacing is often under-observed and this can throw off the whole.
5. Should you put a firm boundary around the nostril it will tend to look “flat on” to the viewer and hence a little snout-like.
6. Finally, I look carefully for the highlights on the nose. These can have a big effect on the way the shape (and length) of the nose is perceived. It’s important to catch the shadow at the bottom and not place the highlight too low or the nose could look proboscis-like.

Creating an overall completed portrait likeness

In this example, I follow a general progression described as above and in the preceding sessions, to create an overall completed portrait likeness:

Young Girl in Acrylic

Low-tone underpainting

This is my initial underpainting…..quite rudimentary but helping to get the layout and placement of features. Note that the mouth blends into the area surrounding on one side. There is not much definition for the nose, however nostrils are there and reasonably evident. The eyes, as with most of my portraits, start primarily with defining the shadow in the eye socket.

Underpainting developed

In this case, I was not entirely happy with the previous layout and spent some time developing it in grays, formed with a mix of Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine blue. The overall layout is established with placement of features and key lights and darks – in this case with some preliminary blending. The mouth is is essentially unchanged, however the nose is modeled with paint showing direction and contour.

Colour blocking

The overall topography of the face so established, colour is applied onto the low-tone base and the lips developed by glazing translucent colour onto the formed shape. You can still see the underlying lips and I have not made an attempt to entirely cover, although in fact, they have been somewhat re-profiled. The size of the nostril has been enlarged. At this point, it looks reasonably complete, and certainly recognizable….however not quite there!

Finalizing likeness

In this final version, the cheek has been brought into more light, the darker paint beneath still underpinning the area. The nostril changed (back toward to the previously modeled form) and then shaped more fully. The lips have also been worked: toned down a tad (I think the previous version looked a little “chocolate box-ey”) and conversely, more dramatic highlights added. As with the example in lesson 5, the eyes have also been developed more fully.

Example in Oil

Smile showing teeth

In this example, I follow a general progression, as described above and in the preceding sessions, to create an overall completed portrait likeness:

Low-tone underpainting:

This is my initial underpainting, helping to get the layout and placement of features. The overall layout is established with placement of features and key lights and darks.

Colour blocking

The overall topography of the face so established, colour is applied onto the low-tone base, the lips developed by glazing translucent colour onto the formed shape. You can still see the underlying lips and I have not made an attempt to entirely cover, although in fact, they have been somewhat re-profiled and teeth defined, perhaps a little too prominently.

Finalizing likeness:

In this final version, the face has been brought into more light with additional layering and blending, the darker paint beneath still underpinning the whole.  The lips have also been worked: toned down a tad and generally more dramatic highlights added. As with the example in lesson 5, the eyes have also been developed more fully. The “toothiness” of the previous version has also been adjusted. Teeth are invariably difficult to get just right and in this case, I had to settle the canine back under the bottom lip.

Exercise

1. Pick two or three of your previous studies and assess mouth contours, specifics of each shadow area and the cheek-jaw area for application to future portraits. Perhaps experiment on the side with some charcoal. Now give the nose area the same treatment!
2. From your reference, run your eye across the centre line of the mouth from corner to corner. What do you see?…..perhaps repeat this in a contour drawing.
3. Working with a new foundation painting of your own choosing (perhaps using the Reference Gallery), experiment with creating depth in the mouth area with intense dark in the corners, with lights and darks modeling the fullness.
4. Using one of your existing portrait studies or this new work, develop the mouth and nose area as a consequence of the above experience.