Jessica Crabtree

It’s finished! This is my first half-length portrait; normally I opt for a closer head and shoulders view. The original photo, as I mentioned earlier, was an old black and white taken around 1870 (public domain). As far as I can determine no one has been able to identify the photographer. However it is known that the subject’s name was Rabbit Tail and he was one of the Shoshone scouts serving in the US army under Captain Patrick Ray.

Incidentally, there is an oil painting by Joseph Henry Sharp of a Shoshone of that name, leaving many to speculate whether it is actually the same individual. The painting dates to a period when the young Rabbit Tail would have been a middle-aged man. Based on the comparison, I see some similarities, maybe even enough to make the two relatives, but I’m not convinced they’re one and the same.

Shoshone, 14×24 original pastel on suede. (click for larger view)

About the Shoshone

The Shoshone people were originally part of a very large extended family of nomadic peoples in what is today the American West. Their traditional territories centered in the arid Great Basin region, where they migrated seasonally hunting wild game and harvesting wild foods. Each of their main bands identified themselves after the staple food they followed.

Migratory bands of Shoshone were among the first Native Americans encountered by European fur traders and adventurers who ventured West in the early 1800s. Perhaps the most famous Shoshone individual of all is Sacagawea, the young woman who worked as a guide and translator for the Lewis & Clark expedition in 1804-1806.

Charles Banks Wilson (born 1918) is an Oklahoma artist famed for his Native American portraits, historical commissions, and mural art. He started drawing at an early age and received training at the Chicago Art Institute, quickly finding work as an apprentice illustrator.

His most popular works are the official commissioned portraits of Oklahoma legends such as Will Rogers and Jim Thorpe, part of the collection of the Oklahoma Capitol. One of the first pieces to earn him wide acclaim was his 1941 lithograph Freedom’s Warrior, modeled after a Comanche code talker, and later re-created as an oil painting.

Wilson’s exhibit page at the University of Arkansas, Celebrating Native America, says:

Images such as “Cherokee Matriarch,” “Katie ‘Osage’ Cheyenne,” and “Osage Orator” reveal Native Americans caught in the transition between native and white America. Wilson says this transition “was not a popular theme in anyone’s opinion” because “Americans wanted the Indian to remain a nostalgic keepsake, committed forever to chasing the buffalo across the boundless prairies.”

Wilson admits he was a bit baffled when people asked him “why I was making social comments.” He says simply, “I was just painting what my eyes saw.”

“Search for the Purebloods”

His most ambitious project was a catalog of portrait drawings of pure-blooded Native Americans. The resulting odyssey spanned fifty years of work and portrayals of over a hundred individuals, many of whom were the last individuals of their nation to have non-mixed heritage.

Wilson’s close attention to accuracy and solid, intuitive technique – combined with his good nature – earned him a strong rapport with his subjects, who willingly modeled for his portraits. In return, he promised never to sell their likenesses and instead donated the finished original collection to the Gilcrease Museum. The published edition, Search for the Native American Purebloods, was released by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1983.

Wilson was the subject of a public television documentary released in 2006 interviewing the artist and highlighting his major career achievements. (Watch an excerpt here.)

He has exhibited his work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Museum, and received countless prestigious awards for his art, historical research, and educational & cultural contributions.

University of Arkansas: Charles Banks Wilson’s Celebrating Native America Exhibit

Charles Banks Wilson exhibit at the Will Rogers Museum

(Click for larger view)

My latest pastel is about halfway finished. Next I’ll be working on the armbands and hands, and finishing his leather vest. After that, some detail work and a few finishing touches and I’ll consider it done.

A quick trick I learned for imitating metallic objects, like the silver-studded border on his vest:
use a plain white colored pencil.

Colored pencils are terrible on suede, but they come in very handy for this one purpose. I use them wherever I need to indicate points of light or very small areas of brilliant white. It’s so much easier than trying to achieve this with chalks. The best part is that the combination of textures works very well – the pencil won’t smear on the suede, so I can cover it with chalk and it still shows up well. Besides, I like the effect.

More to come…

Here’s the first look at my newest portrait, Shoshone, 14×24 pastel on suede. Click to enlarge.

My reference photo is an old black and white of a young Shoshone scout, taken in the 1870′s. More on that later…

My latest finished painting (click for larger image), now available on my Gallery.

Acoma, 18×24 pastel on suede matboard.
The original photo was taken in 1905 by Edward Curtis.

About the Acoma

The Acoma people, who call themselves “Haaku,” are one of nearly two dozen Pueblo communities in northern New Mexico. Their pueblo, known as “Sky City,” is built on top of a mesa where for centuries the only access was a single staircase carved by hand out of the sheer sandstone walls. Thanks in part to this defensive position, Acoma is possibly the oldest continuously inhabited constructed settlement in North America.

From its remote perch on the steep white plateau, the Acoma pueblo has witnessed the rise and fall of the Aztec and Maya empires (its trading partners in ancient times), the incursions of Spanish conquistadors, and the American conquest of the Southwest. Today, the Acoma still live in their ancestral fortress, where they continue to practice traditional arts, ceremonies, and farming.

More on Acoma history:

Acoma Sky City

Pueblo of Acoma

Top Chalks for Portraits

Over time I’ve worked out my favorite combination of chalks to use for portraits (see examples below) in order to achieve a rich skin tone with some highlighting and dark, dramatic shadows. Here’s my list of must-have chalks:

Black
I always apply black first. It helps outline the portrait and gives a boundary to work with, and still shows up even after several layers of blending. I use my Prismacolor Nupastel black for this (I always keep two boxes just of this black on hand, since I go through them so fast) because they are semi-hard and you get a firm clean edge, good for outlining. But you can use really any texture of black for the under coat.

Sennelier #004 (“Red Ochre”)
I use this as a wash over the entire flesh area. You don’t see this in the final product, but it serves two important purposes – 1) it keeps the matboard from showing through (especially important if you use dark suede) and 2) it acts as a base coat when blending the chalks, to keep the tone from looking washed-out. I’m told this typical of the oil painting process – which I wouldn’t know, not being an authority on oils, but it makes complete sense for any medium that uses heavy layering. The bright red wash looks bizarre in the beginning, but it’s well worth it.

Art Spectrum V552 (“Burnt Umber”)
This is the other under-layer or chalk. I apply this very light color wherever I want to show areas of strong highlight or reflection. If you are layering your chalks, DO NOT PUT THE HIGHLIGHT COLOR ON TOP; using white or light-colored pastel over the skin tone to add brightness only makes it look dull and pasty. Apply it as an undercoat and blend the flesh tone over it. This way it shows up very smooth and gives a nice subtle glow, rather than looking chalky. The stronger or brighter you want the light, the thicker you apply the umber, so it doesn’t blend away when you apply flesh tone.

Sennelier #3712 (“Gamboge”)
This is my second choice for highlighting, but I use it sparingly because Sennelier’s soft pastels are so thick and clay-like. Too much and you risk filling up the suede pile and not being able to layer. I use it only where I need some very dense highlighting.

Nupastel #353-P (“Cordovan”)
This is one of my favorite colors for dark flesh tone. It is semi-hard but extremely smooth so I can blend over several layers of chalk with it. A good coat of this really starts to bring the face to life. It is especially useful for shadows where you don’t want the black chalk to make the skin lose its color (skin under a shadow looks redder, not grayer).

Nupastel #273-P (“Tuscan Red”)
A second shade of flesh tone that’s little lighter, a bit closer to pink. I layer this over much of the face and use it to transition between the darker areas and the bright highlights. Because these chalks don’t go on very thick, the pigments are not as intense as they appear in color swatches, making them much more flexible. They can be as solid or as subtle as you want, so at this stage I start working with the texture in much more detail.

Of course you’ll need a few other colors to finish your portrait, but these are a pretty good starting combination. My Sneak Peek: In Progress category shows portraits in various stages of completion, so you can get a good idea of the process.

Both of these finished portraits, Lummi (16×20) and Crow (24×30) were made with the same assortment of pastels (click to see full-size images.)

Bama’s career reads like a cross between that of Norman Rockwell and Charles Marion Russell. Born 1926 in Manhattan, his early career paralleled that of Rockwell (as a commercial artist and illustrator, including work with the Saturday Evening Post). But like Russell, he became a “child of the West” after moving to Wyoming in the 60′s to be closer to the subjects he desired to portray.

Since then he has become a living legend of Western art. His extensive portfolio covers nearly 50 years of work in capturing the iconography of Western lore, from cowboys to mountain men, in gorgeous life-like realism. He is one of the most renowned painters of Native American portraits (which makes up a sizable share of his portfolio), generally painted from live models in historical attire. One of the things I appreciate most about his work, aside from his skill in realism, is the historical integrity and his no-nonsense, un-romanticized treatment of the subjects.

“James Bama’s modern realism approaches the larger-than-life romance of the West from a new angle. The subjects of his portraits are real people, doing real work, with the history of generations past written in their faces and the surrounding landscapes. ”

Profile from The Greenwich Workshop

JAMES BAMA: Gallery and Artist Profile from The Greenwich Workshop

There are so many stunning paintings in his portfolio I had a hard time choosing which ones to feature in this post, so I’ve included just a few of my favorites (click images for larger view).

“Young Plains Indian”

“Old Arapaho Storyteller”

“Little Fawn”

I’ve started a new portrait, Acoma, on 18″ x 24″ black suede board, from an Edward Curtis photo of a Pueblo man. Below is the same portrait one day earlier. It’s still in the first stages (face first, then hair, clothing/accessories, and final touch-ups), but I’ll be updating with photos as I go along.

Check out my Latest page to see them all step-by-step.

The Eyes Have It

When painting a portrait, don’t put in the eyes until the rest of the face is more or less complete. As tempting as it may be to show the whites of the eyes early on, or the bright reflection that really makes them “pop,” you’ll just end up having to touch them up or even do them over when the white is dulled by chalk debris. Bright whites (including teeth) and the twinkle in the eye really should be last-minute touches.

And just to be clear, remember that “white” areas are rarely pure white; diffused light gives them a colored cast, often blue or pink, and subtle coloring helps to give shape and depth to an otherwise cartoonish white surface.

Close-up of “Lummi,” 16×20 pastel on suede

June 12, 1616: Pocahontas, her husband John Rolfe, and their infant son Thomas arrive at the port of Plymouth, England.

Why Visit England?

John Rolfe was a young English colonist whose claim to fame was obtaining tobacco seeds of a marketable variety that would grow in the cooler mid-Atlantic colonies. At the time, England and Spain were locked in a power struggle for domination of trade and colonial expansion, and Spain’s rigid monopoly on the booming tobacco industry gave it a valuable edge. Rolfe’s tobacco enterprise in Virginia offered the English colonies a lucrative advantage, and his marriage to the daughter of the region’s most powerful sachem represented an alliance between colonists and Native Americans – a relationship that had already proven vital to the existence of the colony. So in a word, a visit to England with his wife and son (as well as around a dozen Powhatan emissaries) was a well-calculated move in a public relations strategy.

Reception

Pocahontas was received at the court of King James with all the pomp of a visiting dignitary. Her presence was widely acclaimed throughout London and she appeared at numerous high-profile social functions, where according to contemporaries she distinguished herself by her poise and dignity. Her meteoric career as a media darling was short-lived, however; she fell ill and died unexpectedly while preparing to embark on the return voyage to the American colony in 1617. But her legend continued to enthrall Europeans for centuries, as implied by the long tradition of paintings, songs, and literature she inspired.

Left: A hypothetical reenactment showing Pocahontas in Jacobean dress. (I’m not sure of the source of this photo but it’s a very interesting attempt at a historical reconstruction.)

It is arguable that the sensation caused by Pocahontas’s presence in England helped to spawn the legend of the “Indian princess” that subsequently became so entrenched in the American ethos. As European colonists emigrated to the Americas by the thousands, they desired to connect with their new homeland and forge a unique identity, and before long nearly every colonial family could trace back to some “prominent Indian maiden.” Even today this vestigial “Indian princess” ancestor still reflects the desire of white Americans to try to incorporate their national past onto a personal level.

Behind the Scenes

Still, Pocahontas’s celebrity image stood in stark contrast to the reality in which most Continental Europeans associated with the American Indian. By this point, Native Americans made up a significant, although lesser-known component of the European slave trade. Since the 1500s, European slavers plied the Atlantic seaboard, taking captive thousands of Indian men, women, and children, who were then shipped to England, Spain, and other countries and sold at slave markets. (A prime example is the story of Squanto, the well-known Pawtuxet who was sold into slavery in Spain before escaping to England.) Even more were enslaved elsewhere in the colonies on plantations, and later on, in colonial communities as a primary labor source. As part of European expansion in the colonies, Native Americans from New England, and from Pocahontas’s own homeland in the mid-Atlantic regions, were a major part of the slave trade well into the 18th century.

In this way, Pocahontas’s image both past and present has reflected the discrepancies in white perceptions and portrayals of Native culture, particularly in its interactions with European colonialism.

“Sedgeford Portrait”

See also:
More on the Sedgeford portrait, the Rolfe family, and portrayals of Pocahontas through the ages -
This Day in History: Birth of Thomas Rolfe

In an interesting footnote, a relic of Pocahontas’s visit to England may have survived. A pair of earrings shown in the so-called “Sedgeford Portrait” (which supposedly portrays Pocahontas with a somewhat older Thomas) has been passed down through the Rolfe family and now belong to the Association for Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. The earrings are made from a very rare and valuable variety of shell, in English silver settings. According to George Percy, a Virginia settler and author of a history of the colony, the earrings were set in England by his brother the Duke of Northumberland during Pocahontas’s 1616 visit. The earrings were on display at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and the Jamestown Exhibition of 1907.

General Links

National Geographic Interactive: Jamestown and the Powhatan

Historic Jamestowne: Official Website

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Partial transcription of a 1935 article on the history of the Sedgeford portrait and Pocahontas’s earrings

A Study of Virginia Indians and Jamestown: The First Century by Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Ph.D. (An e-book provided by the National Park Service)

Smithsonian Magazine: “Picturing Pocahontas”

I found this pen and ink study of facial expressions done by Charles Le Brun (1619-1690), one of the premier artists of the French baroque. Each character sketch is labeled (in French) but the captions of course do not need translating. Click to see the full-size.

May 21, 1471: Birth of German Renaissance artist Albrecht Durer

Left: Self-Portrait, Oil on lime panel (1500)

Durer is most famous for his signature work – the ubiquitous “Praying Hands.” The story has it that they are the hands of his brother, who gave up his chance at an art career in order to provide for Albrecht’s training. Praying Hands, brush drawing on blue primed paper (c. 1508)

Whether or not the story is apocryphal, Durer did go on to become possibly the most influential artist of the Northern Renaissance. Durer’s style is characterized by painstaking attention to detail and a focused, dramatic approach to composition. His fascinating portfolio betrays him as a man with an open mind and a curious nature.

He was a prolific artist, and unlike his Italian contemporary Leonardo da Vinci, left behind an incredibly diverse collection of artwork in a wide range of mediums and subjects. Well over a thousand of his paintings, drawings, and etchings have survived to the present day.

Left: Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman,
Oil on elm panel (1505)

Right:
Head Study of a Man Aged 93, Brush drawing on primed paper (1521)

Like da Vinci, however, his most significant accomplishment lay in his ability as a draftsman. Living in Germany in the wake of the printing revolution, he used the crafts of woodcutting and engraving to capitalize on the potential of art reproduction as an industry, making him one the most widely published and esteemed artists of the Renaissance.

Web Gallery of Art – Online Museum Database: Albrecht Durer Biography and Gallery

Below: Wing of a Roller, watercolor/gouache on vellum (1512)
Right: Two Squirrels (1492)
Below right: Young Hare, watercolor and gouache (1502)