Originally Posted by GKreindler
Thanks for all of the wonderful comments, guys (except from you Ben, I hate you). I honestly do appreciate all of the encouraging things you all say, and I never really get sick of it. I mean, I will admit, it always feels a little weird when someone likes what I do (especially for an artist who deep down thinks he's a fraud), but it's the stuff like that that keeps us creative types from slacking. Or at least, I think it does. There's always been a big perfectionist in me that just needs these paintings to be perfect every time. And in my eyes, they never are. I guess that's why I keep pushing myself. I imagine it's something I'll go through the rest of my life. I guess that's why I freak out so much about the color of a button, an advertisement, a weather forecast, and all of the other intangible stuff. If the viewer enjoys the painting and it brings back great memories, then that's a good thing. But if I can bring them back and really make them feel what's going on in the painting - the sun shining, the crack of the bat, the chatter of the stadium crowd, etc. - then that's just gold.
Now Mark, you raise a good question. There's a lot that goes into it, from both an artistic side and a historical side. The latter is where I start. There have been some color photos/film of those old guys, usually dating back to the late 1930s. It's definitely few and far between, but it's super important. Combine that with a lot of book reading and hypothesizing, I'm able to come up with my base color. Now, that will always vary. Joe DiMaggio had an olive skin tone, while I've read some accounts that Gehrig would sometimes appear to be as dark as an African American. Someone like Red Rolfe would have fairer, pale skin to match his hair. Babe Ruth had a pretty normal, borderline tan complexion throughout his playing career, but when he retired and started playing golf regularly, his skin was almost milk chocolaty. I've actually made a list of player's attributes, stuff that I may have learned from books, seen in films, or have even read on driver's licenses. So, whenever I find something like a hair color, eye color or skin tone reference, it always finds its way into my reference. It's the kind of stuff that's really trivial and means nothing to most, but to me, it's gold!
Then artistically, it comes down to knowing that certain areas of a face will have certain variations that are common in most, like having the cheek and nose area be a little deeper and rosier in color, while the chin and jawline become rather neutral as they turn in space. If you notice, people with really dark hair sometimes have stubble that comes in very dark and can sometimes seem to make their jaw almost blue. Sandy Koufax was definitely like that.
More important than all of that though comes down to light. Light is what really shapes everything around us, why things look the way they do. You might notice that bright light shining on someone's face will create a larger difference between light planes and dark planes. The shadows will be more crisp, and will contain more reflected light bouncing into them. And depending on whether the sky is completely clear or not, that will affect the modulation of color temperature.a On a completely overcast day, you'll have deeper, earthier tones. Usually shadows will be warmer in temperature, while light planes will usually be cooler, as they're going to reflect a lot of the tones in the sky. You can see that sort of stuff in the Mathewson painting I did, especially in the nose, cheek, and forehead areas. You'll also notice that the separation between light and shade is much less dramatic than when the subject is in direct sunlight, so the shadows will have more of a 'fuzzy' look to them.
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I just realized that this stuff might sound like Greek. But hopefully some of it makes sense.
Honestly, there's no set formula for any of this stuff, whether it's a skin tone, a sky color, or edge quality of a form, it all comes from observing real life. Then the hard part is taking all of that knowledge and observation and trying to make something look 3-dimensional on a 2-dimensional surface.
Phew!! I'm done. Sorry for the rant.
Oh, and don't worry, I don't think I'll ever be rich or famous. Either way, you guys are the people I love talking to. It's just wonderful that there's a forum for people to converse about such passions. One of mine is matzoh ball soup - I don't talk much about that here. But the other is baseball.
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