Day Two, "Plum Brandy", after Edouard Manet

Today was my second day copying Manet's "Plum Brandy". I had thrown in the features on the face at the end of last week, and wasn't at all happy with it, so the first thing I did was paint over what I had. I shifted both eyes around and moved them up and down. The nice thing about oil paint is that it's so easy to change things. I'm still not entirely happy, but it's better than it was. Several people told me I have a good likeness. I've noticed a funny thing about the portrait by Manet - the eyes are lined up at an angle, but each eye seems to be horizontal and not at an angle. It's just a little wacky looking, which contributes to the young woman's tired and bemused expression. The nose and mouth are fun to paint. Not sure if I have them in the right place, I think they're a little low, but I can fix that next time. 

I worked on the grille on the wall behind her, and on her dress. Also the marble tabletop. I tackled that hand with the cigarette, which kind of looked like a flipper as I left it last week. But I guess I got the shape pretty much right, because I put in the dark lines and shadows and added the cigarette, and it looks OK.

I stopped when I felt tired. But I feel pretty good about the progress I made today. Next time I will put in the glass of plum brandy and work on her dress.

"Plum Brandy" by Edouard Manet

my copy, day 2

New Copy, after Edouard Manet's "Plum Brandy"

I took the summer off from copying, and decided not to continue working on "Lady Caroline Howard, 1778" by Sir Joshua Reynolds. I just didn't feel like finishing that one, so last Thursday I began a new copy, after Edouard Manet's "Plum Brandy". I've been looking at this painting for years and I finally felt ready to tackle it. Portraits are much more difficult to copy than landscapes or still lifes, in my opinion, but since I'd like to get better at painting portraits, I thought it would help. Here is Manet's original painting:

I love the gesture of the figure, and the asymmetrical composition. The original painting is sized 29" x 19 3/4", and I have to go at least two inches smaller or larger, so I figured out that 25" x 17" was the closest I could get and have both dimensions closest to whole inches, which is how stretcher bars are sold. I stretched my canvas and drew lines dividing it up into fourths and marked diagonals corner to corner. I also printed out the original and marked the printout with the same divisions. Since I was going to start from a blank canvas and do all my drawing in the museum, I thought this would help me. I carefully measured by eye and drew on my canvas with paint, stopping to double check against the printout which had the quarters and diagonals marked. In this way I was able to get a fairly accurate drawing onto my canvas. I must admit that I'm pretty perfectionist about this stage, because it's the foundation for the painting. My goal for the first day was simply to get it all drawn on in outline, but I was done with this phase pretty early, so I went ahead and started mixing colors.

When I broke for lunch, this is how far I had gotten:

After lunch, I finished blocking everything in. I was trying to match colors, and haven't gotten too specific about anything yet. A friend stopped by and snapped this photo of me:

I painted a little more after this, and starting roughing in the face, but I realized I was getting pretty tired and decided to stop for the day. I forgot to take another photo in the gallery, but took this one in the locker room before putting the painting away:

I shouldn't have put the face in yet, it is totally wrong, but I'll paint over it when I go this week. Now that I have things in generally the right place, I'll focus more on building the painting up one area at a time. This painting might come together quickly, we will see!