The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

Never Paint Living People.

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

Never Paint Living People.
Time to do the portrait; this is the fun part! Or so I thought as I started. Little did I know what tale of woe and tribulation would -- but I digress again ..

First the flesh tones were painted onto the face (going around the eyes, beard, mouth, and hair) and the hands (going around the harp strings). Then the shadows are put in. Then the mouth, which was very difficult (it's always much harder to do someone with an open mouth, which is why you don't see it much in paintings). Teeth too white. Teeth too dark. Teeth look funny. Shadows around the teeth too dark. Etcetera. While working, I keep running upstairs to the computer monitor to look at the color photo again, in addition to looking at the black-and-white printout. It's important to keep a good idea of the contrast in a scene, especially when working from life or a photo. Where are the lightest light colors? How about the darkest darks? How does this tone compare to that very dark or very pale tone over there? Of course in the photograph, Johann's eyes are merely dark slits. So I attempt to paint in dark slits. Arrrggghhh! Wrong move -- wet a clean brush and get that paint up, quick. Obviously, I'm going to have to paint in the whites and irises to look convincing. This is difficult, as one has to be careful to get the eyes looking in the proper direction, and in this case there are no guides. More studying of the photograph, and I sit down and sketch the shape of the eyes on a piece of scratch paper, and draw in irises and pupils. Repeat until it's looking right. Then pick up the paintbrush and lay down the whites of the eyes, then do some dark blue for the irises. Shift things over a bit. The brush tip refuses to co-operate and keeps blobbing out right where I don't need it. Much cussing ensues. Garth wanders over and remarks that Johann is looking like Marty Feldman (for those of you who don't know, Marty Feldman was an actor who had enormous, google-eyes). Garth leaves the room before I can murder him. I paw through the pile of brushes looking for one which has a good, clean tip without any stray hairs (it seems that all brushes develop a wild hair or two after a while -- and you end up trying to make sure it's angled just in the right way so you can make the wild hair work for you, but it's tedious), and decide that I'll have to buy a new #2 round. Curses and other comments. Dab at eyes again with some gray -- now it looks even worse! I say aloud, "Now, that's enough! Just stop! Leave it alone! Go away and look at it tomorrow." Garth asks who I'm talking to. He's not interested in getting snarled at again and leaves me to artist's angst. As I have endured fighter's angst on trips back from events for many, many years, this is fair pay back.

I go over to the art mart the next day and buy a couple of new brushes, and when I get home from work I pull the scroll out and ponder it. The basic shape of the eyes still isn't quite right. I do a bit more sketching on scratch paper, then go back to the brush and do the eyes again. This time it works, and although the expression still isn't quite right, at least the face is not only human (as opposed to bug eyed monster), it's recognizable as Johann. Deep sigh and I start working on the hair (see comments above about painting blonde hair).

Okay, the worst is over. The white of the shirt is painted in and shaded. The more I look at the darks in the face and the overall picture, the more it strikes me that the interior of that tent needs to be darker, and it needs to be done before the harp strings are painted in. I go back, mix a big batch of really dark yellow, and start laying it in. Much messing about there until that's looking better. Now the harp strings. And now it's time for the harp itself -- and yet another problem arises. How does the top of the harp join the back (sound board) of the harp? It's too dark in the photograph to see, and I really need to know how the construction works, or I won't know what I'm painting. I look at the photograph some more but there's no visual clues. Garth looks at it. Garth's brother (who's visiting us from Sweden) looks at it. Discussions are held -- I think it goes like this -- but no, the two musicians (Garth and Steve both play instruments -- don't look at me, I was in choir, not band) decide that this must be what's going on. A search on the Internet for pictures of harps ensues. I look at many harps. Eventually I think I know what's going on there. Well, not really -- but I can fake it.

That over with, it's time to match the wood tones up with some paint. I paint in the harp's sound board. One nice thing about wood, it's very easy to do. Just paint the background color, then paint in the wood grain by darkening up the base color and then doing wavy lines and partial, elongated curves. Time to match the wood of the upper part of the harp and I'm back in Art Hell. I cannot match the brown. I mix over a dozen different combinations of brown and try them all (mix a small bit of color, brush the bit onto the edge of a piece of paper -- running the color right off the edge -- then place the piece of paper against what you're trying to match, not forgetting that gouache always dries lighter than it goes on) and nothing works. This usually means that the base combination isn't right -- i.e., although I may have four different flavors of brown paint, I'm going to have to go back to the art mart and get more brown paint in other flavors. Nuts and other comments. I end up buying three more browns (and fresh tubes of Permanent White and Spectrum Yellow) and spend $65. Thank God one doesn't buy paint too often, I'd forgotten how expensive it can be.

Back I go to try to match the brown and still nothing works. After another dozen combinations, I decide to throw in the towel and use the brown that seems to work the best and is the closest I can come to the actual color. So I paint in the very light highlights along the top back end of the harp, then the light brown parts. Then the very dark (almost black) parts of the wood is laid down. I mix a darker shade of the light brown and start laying in the wood grain on the lighter bits. Then I went back to the very dark brown again and start laying down light, narrow brushstrokes of it out of the "solid" area to mimic the effect of a big streak of dark wood grain. A few darker spots are made. Throughout, I've painted around the pegs that anchor the harp strings along the top piece. Those are painted in last and as they're small, they don't need much detail.

Now the other browns, the leather wristband (which I think may actually be a watch, but can't tell) the leather strap of the pouch, and the leather belt can be painted in. I waited on doing those because I don't want to use the same brown that's in Johann's hair or in the harp, and elect to go with a very reddish brown for the contrast. The last part on the portrait is the trim on the tunic, which looks like gold braid in the photo. No, there's entirely too much golden yellow going on in that corner already -- sorry, whoever made Johann's shirt, but it's going to be blue trim. We need a dash of cool color to offset all of that hot yellow.

And obviously the hillside needs to be a cool color, as well, so the hillside is done in olive green lightened somewhat with spectrum yellow. The shadows and texture on the grass is done with a green darkened with spectrum red, and alizarin crimson for the really dark places. And now that that's done, it's time to do the flags and tent ropes. Then add the black, wrought iron tent stakes where any are showing. Great! That's all done and now it's time to pull up the masking tape around the entire area. This has to be done very slowly and very carefully -- paint can adhere to the edge of the tape when it's pulled up, leaving a ragged edge instead of a sharp line, especially if you peel the tape by tugging it towards the painted area. Always lift the tape straight up and away from the paint (this breaks the edge free cleanly). I use an eraser to remove some adhesive that stuck to the paper -- aggressive erasing eventually peels up the adhesive. A little bit of the surface of the paper comes up in a few places but that's okay, as paint will cover it.

Time to paint the wooden frame. Just then I realize that I had overlooked something -- I had forgotten to paint the flag on the tent rope going to the royal pavilion! Here's this blank spot right in the middle of the painting and somehow I didn't even see it, which makes me laugh. So, what color to paint it? Yellow, to match the tent? Nah, too much yellow already. White -- a little too stark, especially considering the placement; I don't want people's gaze drawn to the tent rope flag. It's the weekend before the event and I'm working non-stop on the scroll during my off hours and I want to get this thing done; I'd lost four days the previous week. I spent 09/11 through 09/14 glued to my television set and radio like everyone else in the country, my mind and heart in New York and Washington -- impossible to be creative at such a time. And I stared at the harp strings -- red, white, and blue, and I thought -- why not the colors of the American flag? I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should tie in the mundane world to this SCA document, but decided it was yet another subtlety to add to the whole, which in turn should give enjoyment to the recipient. And so the last flag was painted red, white, and blue, and then I moved on to do the wooden frame which enclosed the entire illuminated panel.

I decided to go with a warm, redwood tone for the frame and painted the entire frame one section at a time, going around the laurel leaves in the two laurel wreaths so I could see where they were placed, coming back afterwards to stick a dab of paint into the middle of each leaf. I mixed a small amount of lighter brown and painted in a highlight on the right-hand side of each laurel leaf, then mixed up a large amount of dark paint and painted in the fine lines of the wood grain, after deciding where the "joints" in the wooden frame ought to be so the grain ran in the appropriate direction (the devil is in the details, or in this case, in the tent ropes, harp strings and wood framing). Then I put a dark shadow on the left side of each leaf. This is difficult to make out in the photos; you can just see it a little here and in the next picture of the other side of the scroll.

I backed off and looked at the entire thing once this was done and studied it for a bit. Johann still didn't look right -- oh, it looked like him, all right, but he wasn't smiling with his usual good humor, he looked more like he was baring his teeth. There wasn't much I could do to narrow his eyes more without running the risk of botching things up again, but I did take up a colored pencil and add a little bit more of a shadow under the curve of his cheek to make it look more rounded, as is the case when people are grinning, and a bit more "crows' feet" wrinkle at the corner of that eye, then added "eyelashes" which helped to narrow the eye a little more. This helped a lot -- now he was grinning. I also took a naples yellow color pencil and punched up the highlighting on the wooden laurel wreaths, in addition to adding a bit of highlighted detail randomly to the wood grain. Again, that doesn't show much in these reproductions.

-- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

The West Kingdom History Website was created by and is maintained by Hirsch von Henford (mka Ken Mayer).