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Art For Sale - Saint Michael Miniature Pen and Ink Drawings
including:
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Our Lady of Guadalupe, stippled ink on genuine sheep skin, a (finished) Work In Progress |
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including:
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Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, Inc.
The Society of Tempera Painters
Marians Of The Immaculate Conception
Egg Tempera
A work in progress
Saint Michael, Archangel
Tempera over ink
Using a Coptic Style Icon for the design
When I decided to use this design of a Coptic style icon for a model, it seemed like it would make a good candidate for the technique of using India ink under egg tempera. In addition, the nice people at RealGesso.com had sent me one of their hardboard panels to test, and the surface seems conducive to both ink and tempera, so I will be using that as a support instead of wood.
| 6 inch x 8 inch x 1/4 inch gessoed hardboard by RealGesso.com |
| Koh-I-Noor Ultradraw ink applied with Rotring Rapidoliner size .35 |
| Higgins Waterproof India ink applied with a Hunt crowquilll nib |
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Egg tempera (pigment, egg yolk, water, clove oil for preservative) |
This is the original design model. Icons are viewed/copied differently than other types of images in that the method includes copying from the original, and limiting the variability or the artist's input or creativity. There are a few copies of this model, and I found one that includes the demon under Saint Michael's feet, but I will be following the coloring as shown above.
This is the model with the demon included.
I printed the image in black and white so that I was able to easily see the line work of the image. I then rubbed a graphite pencil on the back of the image. Then, by tracing the image onto the gessoed board, I am able to accurately capture the detail as shown below in the scan of the initial pencil tracing. The image is actually a little darker than what is shown.
The next step is to ink in the image. This time I used a Rotring Rapidoliner with Koh-I-Noor ultradraw ink in it. The Rapidoliner is a somewhat disposable pen, and this way, if the tip becomes clogged with gesso, I won't be ruining a more expensive pen. I also could have used a crowquill nib and Higgins India Ink, but as this was the first time I was using ink on this particular surface, I felt I would have better control over the absorbency by using the Rapidoliner.
Above is the inked drawing. For the most part I have outlined the major areas and provided the guidelines for where more detail will be added later. Ink under egg tempera can be useful for modeling the areas of shadow, as well as applying tone, and as I progress with this, I may apply more ink under Saint Michael's feet, on the two rocks to either side of him, to some areas of the garments, and to the demon's wings. I will leave detail off of some areas of Saint Michael's garments because I will want to blend those areas with egg tempera hatching as opposed to having to overcome a dark shadow area. There are a couple of places where my lines could have been straighter, but I believe they will not pose a problem once I have started layering the egg tempera. The surface of this board took the ink extremely well. The gesso used is actually that which is similar to a traditional chalk/rabbit skin glue gesso, which is quite absorbent. This is not the same type of gesso as that usually applied to prepared canvases, commonly called acrylic gesso.
Above is the painting after I have added tonal values and more ink detail. I used Higgins waterproof India Ink and a number 2 round brush to paint in the flat tonal areas. I treated the ink as a pigment, and added different amounts of distilled water to it in order to have different values of black (grey).
For most of the line detail I am adding now at this point, I used a Hunt crowquill nib with the Higgins ink. A crowquill nib is able to make either thin or thick lines, and now that I was more familiar with the gesso surface, I felt I could control the ink flow with a crowquill. The tonal effects that were applied with a brush were very loosely done. I plan on the background being a yellow ochre with some "texture" of other yellows and browns, so the loose ink tones will allow that to develop. Some areas of Saint Michael's garments I left without line definition, most notably the curved lower half of the figure. In my model, these are tones of light brown, and I felt those could be defined without an ink layer.
Above is a re-worked area, namely the cross bands on his chest area. I hadn't liked the way I did the original inking, and wanted to fix it. This was also a good way to test the panel surface. To remove the other inking (that had dried for 24 hours), I sanded most of it off with a tiny piece of 600 grit sandpaper. I then used a wet brush loaded with clear water , and then excess water squeezed out, to carefully smooth out the area. When I re-inked it, I used the Rapidoliner pen, as the ink flow is constant, and the crowquill would have had the tendency to "grab" the damp area. I probably could have left the old ink as it was and just painted over it, but I prefer to have the correct lines in any area I am painting. Removal of an ink error does have to be done carefully - too much rubbing can lead to a hole in the gesso, which then becomes a real "pain" to fix (by replacing it with new gesso). This surface took my "fiddling" extremely well- without leaving a hole.
It is usually "safest" to let the ink layer dry for 24 hours after applying. This is especially true if using tube egg tempera in the next stages, which has a slight tendency to allows its layers to lift when applying subsequent layers. In other words, two or three layers of tube egg tempera could lead to holes and gaps in the surface if the ink is not sufficiently dry. Hand-ground pigments, for the most part, are less likely to do this.
The next steps will be the applying of the paint layers.
In the above scan, the initial layers of egg tempera are started. I used a dry-brush technique with a 1/4 inch flat brush for the larger areas, and a number 2 round brush for the tighter areas. The very bottom salmon-colored band is an area with no ink, as is the halo. The ink tone of the background greatly assists in setting the balance for the background I want to achieve. Because of the ink, I have tonal effects after only one thin transparent layer of paint. The painting at this point, from tracing to now, has taken 3 and a half hours.
Above is the image after 5 and a half hours of working on it. Most of the areas have at least one transparent layer on them, and I have started cross-hatching the background. It can be seen on the left side that the ink layer will show through the crosshatching, and that by controlling the tightness of the hatching, the amount of ink showing through can be controlled.
At 8 hours
In the above scan, the work on the background can be seen. There will be three layers on the background in the darker areas and four layers on the light areas as I finish working the right side of the background. The whitish layer as seen in the right was added to areas that I did not want the ink to influence. There will be at least one more layer over the entire background to further blend the areas. I have also switched to a size 0 round brush for these uppermost background layers.
Here is the painting at 18 hours. One of the great benefits of ink under tempera is the modeling of the shadows. The cloak only has two layers of paint over the ink, and two different hues in the cloak overall. It would have taken more than two layers to build the shadows without the ink underpainting. The wings also only have two layers at this point, and then some spot areas that will have additional shadowing.
Here is the painting, just about finished, at 29 hours. There are still some things I have to fix or touch up, but for the most part it is done. The ink under drawing was a great help with the wings, the cloak, the demon, and the structural areas on either side of the bottom. In the lower part of the wings, for example, I glazed transparent layers of egg tempera over the ink drawing, never completely blotting them out, but using the egg tempera to enhance them. The lower side structural areas were done the same way - with transparent hatched layers of cobalt blue, violet, warm red ochre and yellow ochre. The finished piece ended up being closer to the second model than the first in the coloration of the clothing. This scan does not really do the finished piece justice, as it does not show the glowing effect of the egg tempera or the satiny surface.
**A similar but more extensive method of inking a complete tonal drawing under egg tempera can be found in the book The Luminous Brush by Altoon Sultan.