The Portrait Sketch With Jeremy Lipking Rar
I had the extreme good fortune of participating in a Jeremy Lipking figure painting workshop in LA this past weekend. I spent a day and a half watching him paint and another day and a half painting a few oil studies from life myself. Jeremy spoke quite a bit about his process while he painted and it was incredibly awe inspiring and humbling to watch him work.
We painted a stunning Iranian/Swedish model named Malo, on the beach in Malibu on the last day- lucky me! Lipking was a generous host and a blast to be around. He completely blew my mind on the last evening by referencing Pantera's album Cowboys from Hell- warming the corners of my true skid soul! Sara Sniderhan studied classical drawing Michael John Angel and painting with American artist Jeremy Lipking.
Her work is represented by Ingram Gallery in Yorkville, Toronto and has been exhibited in Toronto, New York, Calgary, Winnipeg and Hamilton. Sniderhan has been awarded by the Portrait Society of America, the Toronto and Ontario Arts Councils and was shortlisted for the Kingston Prize for Portraiture this year. In 2010 The National Portrait Gallery of Canada added her painting of Canadian actor Enrico Colantoni to their permanent collection. She lives on a farm, is a sessional professor at OCAD U and teaches workshops and weekly classes in her studio in Creemore, ON. To contact Sara email her at: sara.sniderhan@gmail.com.
JL takes a lot of time posing the model. He pays attention to the light, and what visual pattern it creates. When he is finally satisfied, he takes time to observe and create an idea in his mind of the composition and the concept for the painting.
The Portrait Sketch With Jeremy Lipking Rare
He is painting a front view, and tries to avoid a 50-50 division of light and dark in the face. The first posing session took 20 minutes, and although a big part of the time was filled with answering questions, still he spent most of the time just observing. His painting approach is not always insightful. He does not start with an overall design to establish proportions and composition. Instead much of this takes place in his mind, and the start of the painting consists of a tonal value and color indication of the light area of the face.
For this he used paint thinned with mineral spirits. On top of that he starts making marks of where the eye is going to be. He measures a lot, but the results of this measuring are hardly visible as marks on the canvas. Only a few brushstrokes indicating some heavy shadows, contrasting the value of the light area of the face. JL spends a lot of time developing a concept for a painting. When his idea is clear he takes photos for reference, and combines different photos to construct his desired composition.He does a lot of sketches, color ideas and tests before he starts on the actual painting.
Some of these studies appear to be fully rendered paintings themselves. JL states that he sometimes just gets carried away doing these studies, but mostly these studies are much smaller than the final painting, and he uses them to solve problems in advance.