Darwin, Rationality and Renaissance

I've been away from keyboard for a few days. I actually felt guilty about neglecting this blog.  In the time I've been able to snatch inbetween doing gainful employment, I've managed to produce a portrait of Charles Darwin.

One of the sites I love to  visit and revisit is Freethought Blogs, and my favourites there, Pharyngula, En Tequila Es Verdad and Blue Collar Atheist (this is not to suggest that these are the only blogs there, or the objectively best, or that the others are somehow unworthy. These are just my favourite three of a large group that I like immensely. I strongly suggest that anyone go to see if there's anything that catches their eye there). I wanted to show them how much I appreciate their words, which entertain and inform me so well and the idea came to me all of a sudden. A long term project was born (and I'm really going to stick to it this time) . It might take me a while, but I'm going to do them each a painting.

I thought I'd start with Charles Darwin. Central to a lot of debate, he's a famous figure in science politics, as the Theory of Evolution that he proposed was received poorly in his own time (and it still seems to have some resistance even today) and is pretty fundamental to basically every biological discipline.

So, taking up some peculiarly dense watercolour paper I had found, I got stuck right in doing some pencils for a study for it. The image is taken from an old photo, rather a famous one I think, and I basically mentally cropped it. I must say that the intense tonal contrasts in his face are extraordinary - Darwin was a craggy-looking fellow. I found it really interesting to work on all his myriad crevices and wrinkles. What a life of thinking and pondering and worrying he had - no wonder! 

I agonized long and hard about whether or not to do it in monochrome, like the old photo was, or whether it should be a colour study. As you can see, this is after the first couple of layers of watercolour, and it is indeed in colour. I thought that since the reference material was in monochrome, it would be an interesting challenge to try to render it in colour. It sure was.

 More pictures of my progress on this one after the fold.

That difficult middle bit

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And here's the finished picture, ready to be cut out, mounted and framed, but more likely stashed away somewhere. I'm not very happy with it, to be honest, but this is the value of doing a proper study in colour rather than doing a doodle and hoping for the best.

 
You see, the original photograph is like a master piece in chiaroscuro (pronounced KYA- ro-SKOO-ro), an artistic technique characterized by intensely dark backgrounds and a light subject which model volumes strongly. In Italian, it literally means ''light-dark''. You see it a lot in paintings dating from the late Renaissance right up to the modern day. And as much as that was what I wanted, that was not what I got.

So here's what I think is wrong with my study:

Firstly, my effort here has the background rather too light, and so the forms are not very well modelled for my liking. I gave a shot at darkening the background right around the subject to make it stand out a bit, but I would be better continuing that all the way over the background. I might not go as dark as pure black, but certainly, darker than the midtone seen here would be better. Essentially, there's not enough either tonal or colour contrast to really describe the forms.

Secondly, I don't think that a blue background is appropriate. At the time, I was thinking, ''Hey, skin is a warm colour, right? Prolly lots of pink tones, bro!'' but it seems that I am defeated by two things. Partly, the subject is really old. He shouldn't be a pink, healthy looking colour nor does he look ruddy, He seems not to be rubicund, or cherry-pied, or Tangoed. I tried not to paint him being all red faced. Also, the lighting on him in the original is really strong, which lightened him up quite a bit. He seemed to be made from marble. Thus, the skin tone I've got there is actually quite cold, because that's what it looked like in my reference.

Thirdly, I don't think I got the fundamentals of the drawing just right. I thought I had gotten that brilliant 'thousand-yard stare' he's got going on there spot on, but now that I look at it, I'm unhappy. I think that patiently going over it with some fine brushes and dark paint might save it though.

The bottom line here is this; that the next step in improving this picture is probably to change the background to a warm, earthy brown-red, and to darken it significantly, especially in the details of his wrinkles and jacket. A new study is upcoming.

What I've learned:

• That doing a colour and/or tonal study before doing a piece for serious, is invaluable for eliminating the first few wacky ideas.

• Charles Darwin's beard was most likely just a bit yellowed.

• Spending twenty years knowing that accepted worldviews do not chime with the facts that you can observe, and worrying about whether or not you'll be persecuted for pointing this out, as well as politely fencing around the research subject that has been central to your professional life for many years with your wife, will make your face look like a cliff-face.

As always, any input from more experienced painters will be gladly welcomed.