I’m honored to have my “Umbrales” (Thresholds) series currently exhibited at Viota Gallery in San Juan. These four paintings depict the four classical elements (fire, water, air and earth) and our passage through them (hence the term threshold) as our life unfolds.

Viota Gallery, founded by Manuel Viota Mier, has been serving the Puerto Rico art market for more than two decades. It is one of the largest and most renowned art galleries in Puerto Rico.

Besides selling the finest works of art, Viota Gallery offers framing services, cleaning and restoration, transportation, installation and mounting, insurance appraisals, curating and general art consulting.

Click here for more information on Viota Gallery.

Children of Memphis - Acrylic on Canvas - 24" by 30" ©2011Ben Morales-Correa

Original Photo by Ben Morales-Correa ©2011

Hand-knotted carpet making is a traditional craft in Egypt. Children, especially the female, learn the craft at home or at carpet factories such as those found west of Cairo, near the Pyramids. Here once stood the School of Ptah, in the city of Memphis, the oldest capital of ancient Egypt, which produced the greatest artists and craftsmen Egypt ever saw.

It is claimed that the carpet factories are vocational schools where children are taught a skill that will improve their standard of living as adults. The owners assert that the children work for up to three hours a day either in the morning or in the afternoon depending on their school shift. Whether true or not, they get paid from $20 a month for trainees to $60 or more for the skilled, a sum which is usually higher than what their parents earn. The carpets are sold primarily to the tourist market and the export market.

The older boy is staring at the hieroglyph sign for "to know". Learning a trade at his young age will set him free from want. Attaining knowledge is what ultimately will set him and the future Egypt he represents free from ignorance.

For any painting whose source is a photographic image, a good artist must decide which elements of the picture require aesthetic interpretation. After all, we are aiming for a true painting, not a cheap handmade reproduction of a photo.

This is the very first photograph I took of our son, with my Pentax analog camera before digital cameras became affordable. To create the painting, I scanned the print and processed the picture digitally to enhance detail.

I had the idea of making this baby portrait for some years now, and had already started with the preliminary rough draft on a canvas. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a commercially produced cheap canvas made in China with a texture and primer not suitable for the quality of art I wanted to achieve. I found that out too late and put off the work during the third stage of the painting.

Still, I rose to the occasion and went on after allowing the first layers of color dry to a cure.

The second stage of the painting is called the “dead painting” an awful name, particularly for a portrait of a sleeping newborn child, because it employs cold colors for the modeling of the flesh. Better to call it an undertone. I used cobalt green and burnt sienna, with titanium white for the highlights. The result was very pleasing to me, with the full value range and the main details well defined.

The third stage of the painting is the tonal range stage, the part where I encountered problems with the canvas as the application of color was actually scraping off some of the undertone, even though the coat was already fully dry. However, I knew this wasn’t going to be actually disastrous. Extra care was the key here.

For skin tones, I heartily recommend these two colors: Aqua Green and Cadmium Red Light, both from Liquitex acrylic paints. They blend beautifully into cold and warm grays and with a tinge of cadmium yellow, they provide the full chroma for light skin color. The tones are mixed on the palette with the addition of a little titanium white for the right value and applied in thin semitransparent layers over the undertone. At this stage, the head now becomes well structured with the rendering of baby soft hair.

Rendering the form of the hand convincingly in portrait painting is always a challenge, more so in the case of a newborn child. A hand has to look capable of moving in coordination to perform tasks. Babies hands don’t have this motor skills developed and yet, the artist must show that they are there, though latent. I believe every parent is amazed how wonderfully “crafted” newborn babies hands look, tender, pliable, with soft wrinkles and perfectly manicured nails. And in this as well as in the next stage of the painting I’m focused on these beautiful details, as well as the eyes, nose, the mouth and the ear.

Almost finished, it is time now to work on the piece of cloth and the stitch work. This is the white on white technique and, while it seems like tedious work, the magic of it is that you don’t really need to recreate the entire needlework.

THE FIRST DAY: Acrylic on Canvas 24″ x 20″ by Ben Morales-Correa

The figure is drawn to scale using a grid system, first with a red pencil and then more accurately with black pencil.

With alizarin crimson, I begin to delineate the figure and create shape. At this early stage, the direction of light is firmly established. Since I’m working from a photograph, I need to correct optical errors generated by the camera lens. The brain tends to work tricks on how we see, so I place the canvas in front of the mirror to get a fresh perspective and to ascertain that the drawing is essentially correct.

Italian Renaissance artists, including the Great Michelangelo painted flesh tones over an underpainting of terre verte (green earth). Upon this cool base, a warm color can be applied to produce a subtle modeling in two complementary tones, which makes the subject look alive and healthy. I’m using cobalt green with a tinge of titanium white, the first time I used white pigment in this work. Since cobalt green is not entirely opaque, I won’t lose the drawing underneath. In fact, it will assist me in modeling the shadows in the next step. I will let the green underpainting dry for a couple of hours and proceed with the modeling. If you’re making a picture of your girlfriend, don’t show it to her at this stage. From now on, I shall embark in the most difficult part of this project, transforming a figure painting into a portrait.

I had to work over the entire canvas rather fast, because I needed to keep the paint wet at all times. The flesh is modeled with burnt sienna and titanium white, thicker on the highlights and translucent in the shadow areas. The dark areas are done by an application of cobalt green, reinforced with Payne’s gray over the alizarin crimson imprimatura. Green and crimson are complimentary and thus neutralize each other. At this stage the tonal range of the painting is established. Notice that all the edges have been softened, the colors blended into each other. This is intended to create the illusion of depth on a two dimensional plane. In 3D, the brain instruct the eyes to focus on the objects of interest. In a painting, the artist sharpens the focal points and slightly blurs the rest. Ingres was the absolute master of this technique, and so was Bouguereau.

Ever so slowly, the portrait emerges. Eyes begin to see, the nostrils to breathe and the mouth shows the promise of a smile. The alabaster like skin is becoming vibrant flesh and blood. Thin glazes of alizarin crimson and cadmium red light add warmth to the expression. A glaze of bright aqua green reflects the light that bounces back from the shaded areas. A tinge of this same color, mixed with titanium white and scumbled (opaque or semiopaque color applied by rubbing) across the lighter areas of the face softens the colors and enhances the complexion’s natural radiance. It’s time to make the hair look lustrous and full bodied too.

The painting is now on its way to completion. Everything that requires detail is further refined while the rest is simplified, including the background. I have not used yellow pigment until now, in the rendering the earring. The necklace is finally getting the color that gives the painting its title, literally. My Egyptological friends know the symbolic meaning.

The finished portrait: Lady of Turquoise  30″ x 24″ Acrylic on Canvas

She asked me to make a life size portrait of Poussin from a photo she took some years ago. It had to be very life like, she wanted. My first portrait painting of an animal.

The original photo and the outline drawing to scale.

I do the rough layout of the composition and put in place the general tones, using burnt sienna, cobalt green, mars black and titanium white. I want to have the correct look of the eyes early in the painting, so I do them in color, as well as the nose of the cat. I use cobalt green and cadmium yellow for the eyes and cadmium red mixed with white for the nose. The ears of a cat are very thin and a red purplish color takes care of showing that.  Notice that the cat is in a shadow area except for the front paw.

Now I begin to create details, tightening the drawing and evoking the individuality of the pet. I work on the texture of the hair and add some detail and realism to the floor. I add the whiskers and define the paws.

I corrected the size of the eyes and refined the shape of the head. At this point I realized I needed an unwordly background. The whole point of choosing this photograph was to express that, through love, Poussin could transcend his world of shadows into our lives, hence his front paw into the light.

Coming Forth Into Light – Acrylic on Canvas 18″ x 14″ by Ben Morales-Correa

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