The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

The Portrait

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

"Rose's gown has been painted. Yes, it is orange. This was a very vibrant tangerine orange, made by mixing Orange Lake Light with Spectrum Yellow, which lightened the orange and warmed it considerably. An attempt to make the Orange Lake Light by adding white to it did not go well, as the orange was slightly red in color, causing the tint to be become a salmon color that was not at all what I had in mind -- the yellow moved the hue firmly back into a warm orange, which is retained even after it was tinted with white for lighter areas and highlights. The darker tones were made by adding a touch of ultramarine blue, with the very darkest places having just a hint of alizarine crimson. The warm color against the cool hues in the landscape made it appear to leap off the vellum. Several people seeing the work at this point made this observation, often repeatedly. "Just wait," I would tell them, "it's not done yet. And by the way, Rose likes orange." Most people can take or leave orange -- I rather like the color myself. A good thing, as Rose's color preference led this painting in a direction it never would have gone otherwise when it came to choosing a palette.

"Some difficulties occurred at this stage. The most crucial was the fact that this figure was not taken directly from life, but improvised. Rose sat for several photos and while she was seated and in the approximate position, the gown she was wearing was not the gown depicted here, the fabric didn't fall the same way (Aldith expertly drew up the classical drapery of the gown), and Rose's figure could barely be guessed at in the photographs as she was wearing dark clothing. The area on the figure between the neckline and the waist was the bad one; this was painted quite a few times before the shadows were such that poor Rose's bosom didn't look lopsided, crooked, too huge, or too droopy. Eventually it looked right, but I was still unhappy with the area between the high round neckline and the top curve of the bosom -- it was just too featureless. The braid lent some visual interest but wasn't enough to break up that area, which had a tendency to attract the eye. It really needed something in there, and putting another line of gold around the neckline wasn't going to be enough to help. I painted in a center slit opening and immediately it started to look better -- the additional vertical was good. Adding a ring brooch (hard to make out in the photos, but that's what it is) definitely improved things and added a lot of visual interest." -- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

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