Page 77 - The Decorative Painter Fall 2017

Thin color with water to draw out the main areas of hair with Snow (Titanium) White. Keep your touch light, with the brush handle often somewhat vertical to the surface at times. Draw in the main hair areas, letting some of the background create the medium values so the beard hair will stand out. Don’t try for the mustache tips; add them with a liner later. Tidy up the candy pillows if needed.
The band of trim on the hood in the finished piece has been done with the gold leaf. You might prefer to paint it in as I have here using Light Avocado (medium), Plantation Pine (dark/shading) and Citron Green for highlighting. This will balance the green candy strokework detailing.
Because this lighter background can tend to come forward from the subject, I like to add a soft, darker at- mospheric shading around the main subject. I used a 1/2" shader brush, brush-blending minimum amounts of Midnite Green with just a touch of the Victorian Blue. Keep minimal water and paint in the brush, making ad- ditional layers of color, rather than too much at once. Keep the brush handle more or less perpendicular to the surface. Move your hand back up the handle so that your pressure will be lessoned on the surface. Work with small, light, crisscrossing strokes. Think of a butterfly, not an X-stroke. Work back and forth lightly but quickly, before the previous strokes can dry. Move out into the back- ground, trying never to see exact strokes, but rather light, atmospheric, out-of-focus background shadows.
Shade the candy pillows with just a hint of Midnite Green where one candy falls on bottom or left of another candy.
FINISHING TOUCHES
Please refer to the finished face when doing final details.
Add more atmospheric background colors if needed. Suit your own eye, but don’t get too dark or too much stroke distinction.
Add more shadows to shade the facial features and lip. Sliding on the chisel edge of a flat brush, pull in wrinkles using the same color. Nostril openings should be done with Charcoal Grey very sparingly – just a shadow along the top edge.
Add more Snow (Titanium) White with the 3⁄4" filbert rake. Allow the brightest white to fall along the jawline of his face, but DON’T LOSE all the medium and dark values on the hair areas.
Touch up candy if needed, then using a no. 2 flat shad- er brush add stripes of Brilliant Red. Shade the red with Napa Red across either end of each stripe, leaving a thin outside edge of the Brilliant Red for a reflected light. Then pull a long highlight of Snow (Titanium) White from near the top to near the bottom of each candy.
Stand back, and add more to the various features as needed. At this point, using a liner (as if it were a tiny shader) and softly stroke a Hi-lite Flesh on the tip of his nose (blot the dot to soften, repeat as needed), the length of the nose, on the eyes just in the middle above and be- low, at the bottom of each wrinkle, on the middle of the lip and just a hint just above the left nostril opening, down under the bulbous end and around above the right nostril opening. Begin and end this reflected light softly.
Be sure you have enough Midnite Green shading just un- der the upper eyelash line. Add a small, soft reflected light with Snow (Titanium) White using a liner, directly diagonal from the white highlight on the iris just against the pupil.
As a very final touch I added very fine Charcoal Grey eyelashes and some stray hairs over and beyond the main hair areas with Snow (Titanium) White, both with a fine liner brush.
Add small, curved strokes using a no. 6 filbert brush. Load full across with Light Avocado then sideload the near side into Plantation Pine. Come back and highlight outside ends with Wasabi Green. Fine line detailing is done with Plantation Pine. Use the separate pattern as a placement suggestion, after all the rest of the painting is finished.
Varnish both sides and tedges of the board with your favorite waterbase varnish. I use Minwax Waterbase Poly- crylic Clear Gloss.
I used the same procedure to apply the matching hood band, using the variegated leaf as a final touch after all painting was finished.
artist’s sketch
Jean Zawicki began rosemaling in the mid-1960s and took up teaching within two years. In the late 1960s and ’70s decorative painting caught on like wildfire, and there was great demand for classes. She joined SDP in 1976. From 1978 to 2008 Jean travel-taught, and to date she has written 29 books and dozens of packets. Jean held booths at SDP Conferences from 1978 through 2000. She finds it refreshing to have students who are interested in a large variety of subjects, especially her favorites: fruit and flowers. Currently, retirement allows Jean to indulge in her passion to create fired, hand-painted china. You can write to Jean Zawicki at 430 Louisiana Ave., St. Cloud, FL 34769; call her at (407) 892-6383; or email her at jzawicki@cfl.rr.com.
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