My Beauty Best Teacher

Via memeorandum, I see that Sarah Palin is accused of bringing a hairdresser with her on her trip to Haiti. In typical mass media fashion, the major pundits have jumped into the fray in the absence of any other details and had a lot of fun making a big deal about this issue. Apparently in liberal world, women are not allowed to look good (indulge now if you want in your own personal bashing on the personal looks of Helen Thomas or Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi), although men are supposed to always be fashionable, and no questions or comments are to be made when Obama brings his stylist with him on trips.

This incident once again speaks the the raging sexism that continues to exist in politics in our nation. Last election, Sarah Palin was a very low paid Governor and had very little money to go buy the fashionable clothes needed for such a high-profile election, and so was given many expensive outfits to wear in all of the campaign events she was involved with. Those clothes were later auctioned off and raised lots of money for charity. The media spin on it was that she was a typical woman who cashed in on her fame by going shopping. On the other hand, last election Obama was a relatively wealthy Senator who had enough money to buy fashionable clothes, and was given many expensive outfits to wear, and his wife and daughters were also given many expensive outfits to wear, and they kept them all. The media spin on this was that he and his family were fashionable, they were put on the cover of GQ and Rolling Stone on the basis of their fashion, and the meme was that he was being a typical man and looking good in fancy clothes. Sexism reared its ugly head and played a role.

This incident is to be recalled in the light of recent events. The Associated Press recently released a photo from Haiti of Palin captioned, "Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, center, has her hair done during a visit to a cholera treatment center set up by the NGO Samaritan's Purse in Cabaret, Haiti, Saturday Dec. 11, 2010. Palin arrived Saturday in Haiti as part of a brief humanitarian mission. Dieu Nalio Chery / AP". The Daily Mail and Huffington Post both duly follow the lead of their liberal partner in the media with stories about Palin being ready for a photo-op and Palin saying something dutifully girly.

The reality? The person who was doing Palin's hair was actually her daughter, Bristol Palin. Via the Free Republic:

The photo does indeed show Sarah Palin standing with her husband Todd as a woman whose face is obscured uses two hands to fix the hair on the right side of Palin's head. However, one can observe that the woman is white, with her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a white shirt with a bulky scarf and dark pants.

In other photos from Saturday, Todd and Sarah Palin's white, brunette, eldest daughter Bristol, who accompanied her parents on the trip to Haiti, is wearing the exact same clothing and ponytail as the "hair stylist" in the AP photo. That's right, what the Palin-hating AP and others fail to report is that the "hair stylist" is Bristol Palin.

The AP photographer who sent the caption would have known that it was Bristol Palin, but by not mentioning her the AP was able to do a media hit on Palin but still be able to claim they told the "truth" with the caption.

Pictures accompany the story to demonstrate the lack of morality and intelligence demonstrated by AP, Huffington Post, Daily Mail, and any other liberal media outlet that ran with this story.

It is liberals who are willing to play on sexism, even when they know the basis of the fear is lies, in order to win your votes. The appropriate response to that sort of behavior is to punch liberals in the face. Since doing that will probably net you a felony, option two is to vote out of office anyone who demonstrates any liberal tenancies.

For your reading pleasure, try these books by Sarah Palin: America by Heart : Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag or Going Rogue: An American Life.

UPDATE: Via Doug Ross:

To reiterate, a daughter helps fix a loose strand of her mother's hair, and it becomes an international scandal. Amazing. James Lewis is right: for some reason, the idea of President Sarah Palin terrifies the Left. Which is why I grow more comfortable with the idea by the day.

In the NYTimes:

For Nkhensani Nkosi, the founder of the South African label Stoned Cherrie, African fashion has been signified by “the Big Five and leopard prints” for too long. She was referring, of course, to the checklist (lion, elephant, Cape buffalo, rhinoceros and leopard) every big game hunter and tourist with a point-and-shoot hopes to bag...[continue reading]

photo courtesy of Lucas Jackson,Reuters

Chude Jideonwo writes about the challenges of the fashion industry in Farafina:

“Every designer’s work in Nigeria is couture,” Debbie Ogunjobi of Everywoman stores in Lagos said a few years ago, “because, there’s no ability to mass produce.”...he challenge lies in bringing back the spark, and with the new spark, a jolt of sustainability. Some experts have pointed to investment—building the industry to a level where businessmen and corporate players can invest much-needed funds that come with the burden of achieving concrete financial results. After the cameras have stopped clicking, it really comes down to the money.

More here

The Problem with Painting Ripples in Water

Painting food in a still life study will present challenges for the artist trying to make them look edible. Instead, a loaf of bread looks more like cardboard, fruit like plastic or a slice of cheese like Plasticine. How can the artist paint food that looks as though it can be plucked from the canvas it and eaten?

Problems with Painting Food

Tackling the problem of inedible looking food in a still life painting means recognising the practices at that lie at heart, which could be any of the following:

• Pigeonholing food regarding colour and tone, and then illustrating them thus; cheese is pale yellow, tomatoes are deep red, apples are green and fish is bluish-grey.
• Using the aforementioned colour in a simplified fashion, applying it neat and evenly in a uniform layer to represent perishable goods.
• Darkening the colour of the food with black or dark grey for shadows.
• Illustrating detail of the food with harsh lines, such as the blue veins found in stilton or the layers within an onion.
• Similarly, using heavy lines to outline the food.
• Using blobs of neat white for highlights.

Still Life Food Painting

Incorporating food into a still life setting can be a challenging yet satisfying experience if the painting is successful, but can be frustrating if the food fails to convey softness or suggest flavour. And this is often where the problem lies. Because food is experienced on many different levels, such as taste, smell and texture, the artist wishing to express all these qualities in paint may feel overwhelmed. The secret is to forget all other senses, but the visual. Observe food simply as a series of shapes, tonal areas and hues. Above all, dispel preconceptions about how food should look. The following tips may help:

Tips on Painting Food

An item of food often contains different colours and tones rather than just one pigment. A ripe tomato will appear red, yet under other lighting conditions may contain violet, orange, earth colours or even black. When illustrating other such shiny orbs such as apples, lemons or eggs, blend away abrupt tonal shifts to rid of dark crescents. Look out for reflected light. This is light bouncing back from a bright surface into the dark side of the object. Reflected light will make the food appear to inhabit space rather than appear flat. Soft blending will also suggest the waxy surface of fruit.

Art Techniques for Still Life

Intricate areas of detail such as the surface of crusty bread or the texture of cheese can be simplified and build over in glazes. This means blurring the vision in order to break down the area into basic tonal areas rather than illustrating every line and wrinkle. Allow imperfections to remain in the brushwork. Once the paint is dry, dragging a little neat paint over selected areas will enhance the crusty texture in a technique known as “scumbling.” Remember that highlights can often be found on raised areas next to dark crevasses or pits within bread or cheese.

The Colour of Food

Taking the time to mix colours accurately will convey the essence of food effectively. White with various amounts of burnt sienna is ideal for mixing the colour of crusty bread, eggshells and onion skins; viridian, a little pthalo blue and lemon yellow, for rich broccoli, Savoy cabbage and spinach. Cadmium red and various amounts of permanent rose can be found in red peppers, tomatoes, ripe apples and cherries.

Painting Fish Textures

The ribbed patterns found on fish often have soft and variegated edges. Softening harsh outlines will suggest the smoothness of fish skin. Silver fish can be captured with white, burnt umber and a little pthalo blue. A little ultramarine and permanent rose can be used for violet hues often found on cold water fish. Applying translucent white pigment is good for soft highlights found on fish scales. Protein foods will often contain sharp highlights, where neat white will do the trick, but look out for highlights of other colour temperatures, such a bluish or creamy whites.

How to Paint Food Effectively

Painting food often entails heightening visual awareness. Look out for different types of outlines: sharp or blurred, which can be found on the skins of meat and poultry. Look out for reflected light, often found on orb-shaped fruit, which will suggest form. Look out for different types of highlights, warm or cool, as found on fish scales, fruit or bread. Look out for different textures, which can be captured by either soft blending or scumbling. Stripping away preconceptions about how food looks and narrowing down the senses to the visual will help with painting food more honestly and therefore suggest flavour and texture by itself.

Relevant Links

• Demonstration on how to paint strawberries
• Demonstration on how to paint tomatoes
• How to mix oil paint
• Books on oil painting
• Art materials shop

Mike Butcher writing in TechCrunch:

The internet enables dramatic change in the way that businesses can operate – this is what I have called the new ‘physics of business’.But in any given sector, if that change is going to happen, a number of forces need to be working together. The most critical of these is a healthy cadre of entrepreneurs.Indeed, the commercial story of the internet is also the story of how a remarkably small number of entrepreneurs have caused a remarkably large amount of upheaval, and reated a quite spectacular amount of value as a result.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang and David Filo, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, Reed Hastings, Marc Benioff (Salesforce.com), Andrew Black and Edward Ray (Befair), Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster, Natalie Massenet (Net-a-porter),Tony Hsieh (Zappos.com), Evan Williams and Mark Pincus.
The list could fit on the back of a napkin, but this gang have between them created hundreds of billions of dollars of shareholder value. Just as importantly, but they have done so by disrupting the sectors they operate in – from advertising to gambling; high-fashion retail to enterprise software; movie rental to telephony – none will quite be the same again...[continue reading]

A still life with ceramics may challenge the artist wishing to achieve smooth blends in oil paint. But regardless of how carefully the paint is applied, unwanted brush marks and chromatic ridges remain. Dark crescents seem to inhabit spherical teapots; colour-streaks blot porcelain vases. How can a smooth finish be achieved in still life oil paint to suggest porcelain, glass or chinaware?

Troubleshooting Oil Painting Blends

Smmoth Effects in Oil Paint Rachel Shirley

Creating a perfect blend to represent a gradual chromatic or tonal shift offers challenges for the artist wishing to suggest smooth ceramics in a still life. But before making improvements, the practices that sabotage this objective needs to be identified, which could be any of the following:

Applying oil paint alla prima, or in one layer, will often exhibit broken glazes, uneven paint layers and brush marks. The effect is enhanced if applying dark paint over a white painting surface or over an under-glaze of a conflicting colour. Thinner areas will reveal the colour beneath, resulting in a sketchy or unfinished look to the painting.

Using bristle brushes will inevitably leave brush marks over the paint layer, which is more suited to expressive or breezy type of oil paintings.

Adding increasingly thicker layers of oil paint in a bid to correct imperfections beneath will result in an unwanted impasto effect that will not be in keeping with a smooth finish that suggests chinaware.

Using coarse canvas or an art surface with dried impasto will make suggesting the smooth surface of porcelain more difficult.

Smooth Effects for China and Porcelain

In fact, achieving smooth blends in oil are often difficult when working in alla prima, particularly if the subject matter depicted is of a conflicting tone or hue to the art surface. Applying an under-glaze of similar colours to the subject matter will provide the ideal foundation for creating smooth effects. A still life consisting of chin-blue objects, for instance, may benefit from an acrylic wash consisting of ultramarine and white. This will eradicate unwanted white areas from poking through the paint layer.

Oil Painting Technique for Smooth Blending

A combination of glazing and blending is often most effective at achieving smooth gradations in oil paint. Soft tonal gradations in porcelain, or any smooth material, can be suggested by the following steps:

If the porcelain is pale, apply a thin wash of pale blue acrylic paint to eradicate the white art surface from showing through the first layer of oil paint. This will also help the artist judge tonal values in the porcelain more effectively.

Begin with the mid tones, which might consist of white, ultramarine and a dab of burnt sienna. Apply this paint in moderate amounts via a fine sable brush. Work towards the highlights by adding progressively more titanium. In similar fashion, work towards the darker areas by adding a little more ultramarine and burnt umber. Don’t add a new pigment all at once, but a little at a time Work over the painting to eradicate unwanted ridges in the paint, accepting that the blends will never be perfect. Stand back from the painting to ensure no unwanted tonal divisions, otherwise invisible close-up, can be seen in the painting.

Oil Painting Glazes on a Still Life

Allow the painting to dry, and then repeat the previous step with a translucent layer of oil paint which might be thinned with a little linseed. Again, work over the painting with the objective of creating smooth blends. The underlying paint layer will work with the upper layer to create a more perfect finish.

A third layer of oil paint can be applied once this second glaze is dry. The artist need not cover the entire painting with the overlying glaze, but areas that require special attention, such as tonal shifts on cylindrical or spherical ornaments. Use a soft sable throughout. Extra smooth gradations can be achieved by applying a thin layer of paint via the pad of a clean soft rag. Dab over the layer ensuring only a clean area is in contact with the painting when shifting the colour mix. Lightly brush over this layer with a wide soft sable. Finally, stand back from the painting to ensure the overall effect is satisfactory.

Smooth Effects for Shading on China

Super-real effects on chinaware, porcelain or ceramics need not require hours of painstaking blending, but several short sessions of oil painting. The secret to achieving smooth gradations in paint lay in the consecutive layers of thinned paint glazes. The first layer can be worked over to eradicate imperfections and to enrich colours. The finishing touches may consist of dabbing a soft, clean cloth over select areas of ornaments for an airbrushed effect in paint.

Relevant Articles on Still Life Painting

• Article on how to apply oil painting glazes
• Still life painting tutorial
• Books on oil painting
• Oil painting materials
• Demonstration on painting garden tools

Although many liberals and progressives (and those who unwittingly do their business for them) are going to try to continue to extend the race for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney's victory in Michigan should end this long and draining contest. From my hotel room in Cheboygan (I was up north this week visiting my grandparents) I managed to watch his victory speech after winning the primaries in Michigan and Arizona, and from that and his overall conduct in the campaign I think that we learned some important things about Mitt Romney from this victory.

First, when Mitt gives speeches and speaks with people he provides clear objectives and lays his views and policies clearly out, although sometimes in a way that lacks passion or in a way that is too complicated for your average voter to understand. Either when delivering prepared statements using a teleprompter as he did in his victory speech on Tuesday or when responding to question and answer periods with no preparation as I saw him do the week before at an event in Royal Oak, Mitt Romney is able to address a range of questions and issues in a manner that is more clear than either his GOP competitors (with the exception of Newt) or Barack Obama (who after four years as President still knows very little about how government really works or operates, understanding only power and rhetoric).

Second, I think we learned from the Michigan primary that Mitt will continue to keep his eye on the real goal of this election- defeating Barack Obama. While his rivals attack him in their speeches and statements (and may even win an occasional victory against him), he personally does not frequently engage in this sort of behavior and in his public speeches and at rallies he focuses almost entirely on comparing his resume and policy proposals with the results of the last four years of an Obama Presidency. He is focused in a very clear way at beating Obama, and in doing so he is still beating his opponents- one can only hope that voters recognize this and reward him with the nomination, because if he gets dragged into the gutter of negativity and attacking speeches like his opponents, that will take away from his appeal and damage the GOP in general.

Third, from Romney's schedule and the sheer volume of his actions we can get a taste of the kind of worker he would be in the White House. Right now our President is perhaps the laziest President we've had in many years, working few hours, taking many vacations, and frequently playing golf. The bulk of the 'work' that President Obama appears to do (from reports from his own people) is giving speeches and making comments on proposals and research that other people come to him with. Imagine a king sitting on a throne, making a pronouncement or favoring a chosen advisers advice, and you get a good picture of President Obama's 'hard' work in office. In comparison, Romney appears to be everywhere, crossing the nation to attend debates, go to a NASCAR race, make speeches all over Michigan, and somehow find time to spend with his family (I met his niece and she told me about the nice lunch and enjoyable lunch she had with her uncle last week when he was in town). Romney works long hours, shakes a lot of hands, patiently signs every sheet put in his face, and moves with strength and energy from place to place. My observations match what people have said about him during his time as Governor or saving the Salt Lake City Olympics or as CEO of Bain- that he is a hard worker and willing to put in the long hours doing real work as President to make our nation better governed.

Fourth, out of all of the candidates that I have heard speak and met, Mitt Romney refers the most to the principle of federalism. Federalism is one of our nation's founding principles and is not just a talking point to him- he truly thinks that people should have more ability to make decisions at the local level regarding their lives. This is one reason why I believe his defense of Romneycare and his attack on Obamacare- healthcare is an issue that was constitutionally left to the states and there is nothing constitutionally wrong with states deciding to tackle healthcare in whatever fashion they wish (although I personally don't like Romneycare). But Obamacare is different- there is nothing in our constitution regarding government control of our individual health choices or health insurance choices- in fact, because health insurance does not cross state lines it is not interstate commerce and even even liberals with a broad and utterly tortured interpretation of the commerce clause can not defend Obamacare on those grounds. Romney as President will spin off many national government functions to the states, and our nation learned a great lesson from the welfare reform debate in the 1990's- that liberals were utterly wrong on all the horrors that would be unleashed if states regained more local control and that conservatives were completely proven correct that more local control would lead to better policies and more people gainfully and happily employed. The success of the Welfare Reform Act in 1996 was not lost on Mitt Romney, and his belief in federalism shows through in his many speeches.

The last observation that I am going to offer after watching Romney campaign in Michigan and win is that he appears to be running a convention campaign that in resembles candidate campaigns in 2004, 2000, 1996, 1992, 1988, etc. By 'conventional campaign' I mean that he is targeting issues and speaking about them and developing policies to address them, and systematically going after Obama on a range of issues and policies. He isn't engaging in an Obama '08 campaign or a Santorum '12 campaign and relying on hope and change and rhetoric and tapping into the culture of an American people- rather he is playing a game of small ball and going to bunt and single his way to victory in the general election. As a government teacher I've watched almost all of the campaign commercials on Living Room candidate and put together units on campaigning and elections, and as a history teacher I've taught about the elections of the past, and Romney's campaign looks the most like these. Obama is going to go small ball in 2012, focusing on individual policies and small gains in a range of measurables to make his case for re-election- and this is going to be a winning strategy and much better than his 2008 hope-and-change and people-fainting and soaring-rhetoric strategy. To continue my baseball metaphor a little further, since we don't have a candidate who can smash rhetorical home runs (like Reagan) and just power to victory on the strength of an amazing resume (like Nixon), it is good to see that we have a Romney who is going to match Obama bunt for bunt, single for single, and engage him and win the election by battling on each specific issue and drawing clear contrasts in policy decisions.

As you can see, Romney's victory in Michigan showed me some important things, and I know that the media is going to try to spin it differently because they want to keep this thing going and bleed Romney dry of resources, but this government teacher saw some very positive signs out of Michigan and hopes that readers in other states will continue to vote for him and move him through these primaries and to victory.

Please read my endorsement of him from earlier this week for more of my thoughts on why Romney is the best candidate for the GOP in 2012.

Painting hair on a portrait could cause dismay if previous results look too perfect or uniform. In some cases, a head of hair may look more like one object rather than thousands of strands that yield to the touch. In others, the hair may look as springy as nylon where each root appears rather too abruptly at the hairline. How does the artist paint realistic hair?

Problems When Painting Human Hair

How to Paint Human Hair Rachel Shirley

In order to paint hair with realism, the artist must first identify painting practices at fault and make changes. Culprits to painting unconvincing hair could be any of the following:

• Using the same brown, white, beige or black colour to represent a whole head of hair.
• Trying to illustrate every strand of hair with fine linear brushstrokes.
• Painting the hair in accordance to an idealised root pattern, such as one that converges from one point at the top of the head.
• Treating the hair as a separate entity to the rest of the portrait.
• Using the same tone or colour to represent whole strands of hair from roots to tip.
• Using only white to represent the highlights on hair.
• Trying to illustrate eyebrows and eyelashes in a purely linear fashion or using the same colour throughout.
• Using black dots to represent stubble or shaved hair.

How to Paint Human Hair Realistically

Whether the artist is painting from a photograph or from life, it is important to make sensitive observations when painting hair. This means not making assumptions about how hair should look like and to paint what the eye sees. In order to paint convincing hair in portraits, the artist can make improvement by the following tips.

• Not every strand of hair will be visible from root to tip. Some will tuck under or undulate at various points. Others will stray from the head, due to static.
• Human hair often contains strands of different shades and even colours. Blond hair, for instance often contain darker strands in the lower layers. Dark hair will often appear bleached on the upper layers due to sun exposure. Some heads of hair contain flecks of salt and pepper.
• Hair will often contain the most unlikely colours. Black hair, for instance, may appear blue at the highlights. Brown hair often contains crimsons or even violets. Blond hair often contains honey shades.
• The tonal value of hair will often appear to vary according to the thickness of the hair layer. Areas around the hairline, edges of the eyebrows or at the nape will appear paler than where hair is thicker.
• Good photographic reference will help when painting hair. This means working from a sharp photo in order to maximise realism.

But one of the commonest mistakes when painting hair is to illustrate each small strand in a linear way. Stubble, for instance should never be illustrated as dark dots. From afar, it will often appear as a tone between the flesh colour and the colour of the stubble, which may be grey. The same rule applies to eyebrows and hairlines.

Techniques for Painting Hair

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Various oil painting techniques are suitable for painting hair, depending upon the effect desired. It is often better to suggest detail than illustrate every strand, or the hair could end up looking harsh. Begin by blurring the eyes to get an overall impression of the hair, breaking it down into basic areas of highlight, shade and colours. Apply large areas of colour and tone first. Using glazes will help achieve a high finish by smoothing gradations and creating rich colours in the hair. This can be done by mixing a little linseed oil into the oil paint and applying the colour in layers, allowing each to dry. Blending is also important.

If realism is the goal, picking out selected areas of the hair and illustrating them will help give the impression of overall detail and avoid the hair becoming an unwanted focal point. After glazing, drag neat paint over a selected area with a fine sable. This can be used to illustrate flyaway hair or hairs that stray over the face.

Oil Painting Materials for Painting Hair

I personally use the following oil colours for hair: burnt umber, burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, pthalo blue, permanent rose, cadmium red, cadmium yellow and white. Fine sables sizes 6 for applying glazes and 1 or 3 for detail are ideal. Linseed oil or alkyd medium is ideal for thinning the paint for glazes. Of course, good photographic reference or a patient model is essential.

Related Links on Portrait Painting

• Art books on portrait painting
• Skin tones in portraits
• How to paint children from a photo
• How to paint figures from life

A painting featuring high tonal contrasts and an array of delicate shades between may confound the artist who is unsure of how to make each tonal value sit together in a convincing still life or landscape. Instead shadows resemble black holes in the canvas, colourful objects lack form, and pale objects simply look insipid. The result is a painting that lacks atmosphere. How can the artist produce a painting that has a strong sense of light and dark and therefore mood?

Troubleshooting Lights and Darks in Painting



How to Paint Tones Rachel Shirley

Rendering tones in a painting will be made difficult if the artist fails to make sensitive observations of how light actually behaves in real life. Presumptions about tones may undermine any attempt at a painting that has an authentic sense of light. In this respect, the following approaches need addressing:
Assuming objects of a particular local colour are always darker or paler than another. For instance, yellow objects are paler than blue ones, and violet objects are darker than orange ones.

Making generalised assumptions about shadows being black or dark grey, or illustrating them as being the darkest area of the painting; and in similar fashion, assuming an object that catches the light is always the palest area.

Viewing highlights and shadows as definite areas of light and dark without thought for the tones between. The result is a painting that seems to comprise of cut-out shapes that lack delicate shades or diverse divisions between light and dark.

Painting Tips for Shading

A painting featuring bright colours will often get in the way of how light or dark the objects actually are, and could mislead the artist of the objects’ tonal value. The following simple tips may make the task of rendering shades more effectively.

Apply a thin under-glaze of a neutral colour onto the painting surface first. This will kill the overpowering white of the canvas, which could give the artist a misleading impression of how light or dark colours actually are when applied.

Half-close the eyes to reduce colour values. Standing back from the painting has the effect of scaling down the image and the subject matter into smaller areas of light and dark that can more easily be processed and therefore recorded onto canvas.

Painting Exercise in Colour and Tone

The following painting exercise will further raise visual awareness of tones which can be utilized when painting.

Obtain objects of simple shapes, such as cuboids, spheroids and cylinders. These can easily be found in everyday objects such as matchboxes, cereal boxes, golf balls and biscuit tins. Paint them white. Place onto a white sheet and arrange in a location of good light source. This might be near a window or lamp.

Lightly sketch the objects onto a mid-toned ground. Grey, cream or pale blue would be suitable. Half close the eyes and simplify the arrangement into four basic areas: highlights, light, mid-tones and darks. Begin with the mid-tones areas first, working towards light and dark. View light and shade as abstract forms. Work lightly at first and remember to keep viewing the painting from afar to ensure accuracy.

Once these basic areas have been laid onto canvas, work into the detail by applying highlights and adding definition to the darks. In some cases, shadows will vary in shade, some of which will be paler than others. Outlines too, will vary; some divisions being well-defined, others blurred.

How to Paint Tones in Increments

Resurce for Artists Rachel Shirley

A further aid can be used and which may help the artist record tonal increments more accurately. Cut a strip of paper or card. Divide into equal squares and fill each square with a particular tonal value, beginning with the palest. This tonal strip can be placed in the background of the setting to assist the artist with comparing one tone with another.

Painting Shades Made Simple

Judging colour values form only part of the painting process. Recording tones accurately will give the painting atmosphere and suggest form. Half closing the eyes will help cut out the interference of colour. Viewing the painting from afar will enable the artist to view areas of light and dark as manageable abstract forms on a smaller scale. But rendering objects in black and white will help raise awareness of tones without the interference of colour. This skill can be carried forward into general painting practice.

Links on Painting Lights and Darks

• How to paint lights and darks
• Oil painting materials
• Books on oil painting
• How to paint a landscape with a limited palette

The artist assigned to paint a portrait of someone with brown hair may reach for any brown pigment to represent the follicles in the hope that it will do, the result being the hair looks flat, dull and more like wool than fine strands. How can the artist paint brown hair realistically?

How to Paint Brown Hair on Portraits

Painting Brown Hair Rachel Shirley

The artist may reflect upon what went wrong when painting hair in order to make changes to how the oil painting was completed. Any of the following painting practices could be at fault:

• Making blanket assumptions about the colour of brown hair, using any tube of oil paint labelled “brown” to represent anything from brunette to auburn.
• Illustrating every strand of the hair in a linear fashion with a fine sable, resulting in a synthetic appearance that resembles a wig rather than real hair.
• Allowing harsh dividing lines to remain between tonal areas, making the hair appear solid or plastic rather than divisible strands.
• Mixing the brown colour with white to represent highlights, or black to darken it, resulting in dirty grey colours.
• Treating the hair area as a separate entity to the rest of the face, by omitting to illustrate how the hair casts shadows over the brow and cheeks, resulting in a cut out appearance to the brown hair.

Tips on Painting Brunette

The observant artist will notice that brown hair is a mere blanket label for a diversity earthen colours, including brunette, ochre, auburn, coffee, toffee, bronze tan, chocolate and russet that require different colour mixes to achieve. With this in mind, the following remedies may help the artist paint brown hair realistically.

• Avoid using generic brown paint to represent the whole head of hair. The brown colour will vary between individuals and even between strands.
• The key to suggesting the soft texture of hair is through blending. Look out for harsh divisions in tonal areas that could draw the eye. Use a soft sable for achieving smooth gradations.
• Highlights are not merely white, but other colours. Some brunettes exhibit blue highlights, others show pinks, violets and even red.
• Avoid using black to darken brown hair. Warm brown hair can be darkened with a little pthalo blue and burnt umber; cool brown hair can be darkened with a little ultramarine and permanent rose.
• There is no need to draw every strand of the hair. It is better to blend the colours of hair and to suggest detail with a fine sable on selected areas of the hair, such as highlights and stray strands.

Pay special attention to the outline of the hair, particularly strands that fall over the face or catch the light.

Illustrating local shadows over the face can be effective at creating an almost photographic representation of hair and making it look as though it belongs to the subject.

Backlit hair will create bright russet colours, pinks, golds and bronzes, with tones similar to bright translucent autumn leaves. Take advantage of these opportunities to create a striking portrait.

Colour Mixes for Shades of Brown Hair

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Lots of browns and earth colours are not needed for every shade of brown. I use burnt sienna, burnt umber, ultramarine, pthalo blue, permanent rose, cadmium red and titanium white for all my brown hair paintings.

The portrait artist may find the following pigment mixtures helpful when trying to capture a particular colour mix for brown hair. The pigments are suggestion only, as in real life, more colours will be seen in highlights, reflections and darks. Varying amounts of white will be required in each case to express paler tones.

Ash brown hair: burnt umber, a little pthalo blue with white.
Auburn hair: burnt sienna, permanent rose and ultramarine.
Russet hair: burnt umber, cadmium red and a little ultramarine.
Toffee hair: burnt umber, cadmium red and a little ultramarine.
Dark coffee hair: burnt umber, pthalo blue and permanent rose.
Almost black brown hair: burnt umber, pthalo blue and a little permanent rose.

Oil Painting Techniques for Painting Hair

Glazing and dry brushing are great for suggesting realistic hair. Such painting techniques are explored on my articles via the links below and also via the links on this site navigation.

• Glazing technique for oil painting
• How to paint children from a photo
• Flesh tones in portraits

Portrait Backgrounds That Do Not Work

Backgrounds to a Portrait Rachel Shirley

Selecting a background colour that is slightly different to the portrait sitter’s clothes, hair or skin, such as pink and red; orange and pink or purple and blue causing unwanted conflict between two colours.

Selecting a harsh or garish colour, such as yellow, bright green or orange and pasting it around the portrait, resulting in a background that appears to advance at the viewer and the portrait to recede or appear too faint.

Using a flat colour and over-smoothing the paint over the background as though emulsioning a bedroom wall until it has a uniform quality without any life.

Guess-working how a sitter’s shadow may look is it falls on a wall behind the figure, resulting in an ugly dark patch behind the portrait.

Great Backgrounds for Portraits

Think about the background to the portrait before embarking on the portrait painting. One of several approaches can be tried.

A photograph that has lots of elements in the background can easily be edited by cutting. Simple is often more effective. A corner of a window, a splash of oblique sunlight on the wall or part of a lamp gives some context to the portrait and add atmosphere.

Featuring a complimentary colour or hue within the background to the sitter can be effective. Smoky blue, cool brown or forest green will bring out the warm flesh tones of a pale person. Cream, china blue or cool mauves will compliment Asian skin tones. Consider the colours of clothing in similar fashion.


• Demonstration on painting children from a photo
• Demonstration on painting figures from a photo
• The colour of fleshtones
• Books on painitng portraits in oil

Taxpayers are expected to pay $8.5 million this year for employees at the the United States Postal Service to show up for work, sit in a break room, and do nothing, according to a recent audit. These workers show up to work, knowing that equipment is broke or that (based on past estimates) mail volume will be low, and then sit around receiving taxpayer money for doing nothing. This 'standby' time, which will amount to 341332 hours a year, also allows these employees to put in enough hours to be full-time employees and fully receive benefits and retirement packages that are quite expensive as well.

Assuming that an average work week is 40 hours and that these employees receive two weeks vacation, that works out to 2000 hours of work each year per employee, if the post office stopped its practice of 'standby time' this would allow the post office to lay off 170 workers. The average postal worker makes $50K/year, so the elimination of this practice would save the postal service 8500K/year, or $8.5 million.

These savings do not include benefits and retirement packages for these employees, which I assume would multiply the savings by several times- postal employees make half their salary on retirement and receive generous benefits before and during employment, so the savings from ending the practice of 'standby time' would be in the tens of millions each year and continue forward into the future.

That's not to say that cutting 'standby time' for postal employees is going to make the United Stats Post Office self-sufficient- the post office has been hemorrhaging red ink for years and is projected to lose as much as $7 billion dollars this year alone. But this is to say that taxpayers should not be paying for employees to stand around.

And keep in mind that if the post office is paying hundreds of workers to 'sit around', it likely has thousands of workers who are doing 'make-work' and who are working at less than full capacity. Oh, I don't mean that postal employees are lazy, I just mean that the structure and culture of their business does not fully maximize the effort and abilities of every worker and likely means that this independent agency is running way below peak efficiency and could save taxpayers billions of dollars a year by becoming a hard working institution of public service.

Postal employees should work and work hard and be paid for their time working- they should not be paid to sit around and do nothing. Contact your Congressman and demand that the Post Office stop its 'paid standby time' practice.

h/p Washington Post

UPDATE: I see from a story today that the US Postal Service is on the edge of default due to its own actions and management. Imagine if the United States government ran critical aspects of our economy, such as healthcare, in the same fashion that they ran investment banks like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, trains like Amtrack, or the mail like in the Postal Service:

The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.

There was great rejoicing in the streets this week as our Dear Leader celebrated his 49th birthday by doing something that probably resulted in job losses and cost my grandchildren a lot of money. His wife took the occasion to do something that every husband finds special on their special day- take the kids and head out of town and spend thousands of someone else's money. From Roger Simon, via Pundit & Pundette:

Michelle’s $375,000 Spanish vacation — with the Daily Mail dubbing her a “modern-day Marie Antoinette” — is further proof of my thesis. What man who wanted to be re-elected (or see his party do well in November) would let his wife go off on such an “excellent adventure” in these economic times? Of course no one denies the right of people to have vacations – I’m coming to the end of one myself on my beloved Bainbridge Island — but closing Mediterranean beaches while booking 60-plus rooms in a five star Marbella hotel for her entourage? It is beyond tone deaf, perhaps to the level of subconscious (or even deliberate) self-sabotage.

At the very least, something most peculiar is going on. The first lady goes off on a jaunt worthy of 18th Century aristocracy at the very moment of her husband’s birthday. Is somebody trying to tell us something? Is somebody trying to tell her spouse something? Or vice-versa? Who knows?

Personally, I think Michelle made the correct choice- would you rather stay in the White House with her husband and celebrate his special day with the usual menu of Kobe beef and fancy deserts next to a roaring fire while joking around with the clowns there (paid for by you and me), or fly to Spain to stay at the fanciest hotels and eat at the fanciest restaurants and go to fancy fashion shows and enjoy hanging out with the other rich and famous to the tune of an estimated (minimum of) $375,000 (paid for by you and me)?

UPDATE: Not sure if you have seen this, but even the butt-kisser Jay Leno has turned on Obama, and mocked him on his birthday:

As the children play in the White House, the adults in Iran are up to no good. Victor Davis Hanson keeps our attention on this important subject in his article Voting Present on Iran:

Iran just announced a radical expansion of its uranium-enrichment facilities. The news followed the recent disclosure of the country's previously secret nuclear facility near the city of Qom -- and came just two days after the International Atomic Energy Agency's censure of Iran for its failure to halt enrichment.

In other words, instead of complying with international requests to stand down, Iran has decided to step up efforts to enrich uranium, which, despite the government's denial, is all but certainly intended for a bomb.

Iran's theocratic leaders promote its pathological hatred of Israel. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. He periodically threatens the Jewish state with abject destruction, calling Israel "a dead rat" and "a stinking corpse." At best, his nuclear missiles would be a permanent sword of Damocles over Israel's head. At worst, in apocalyptic fashion, he could claim for Persian Shiites the primacy of radical Islam by destroying, once and for all, the "Zionist entity."

Iran also gives billions in aid to murderous organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas. Their clout would grow exponentially if they could scare Western allies with the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Apparently Iran has watched this new kindly American approach -- and come to a few dark conclusions: namely that a handful of nuclear bombs will give Iran political leverage, and that, in this new climate, it is well worth the (decreasing) risk in getting them. Rightly or wrongly, it seems to assume that the new repentant American administration is more interested in reaching out to prior adversaries than pressuring them to respect the current global order.

President Obama's serial deadlines and hope and change rhetoric have had no effect on the Iranians. Obama can either accept that the theocracy will go nuclear and live with it, or he must take graduated steps to stop them.

Lost amid all the debate about Obama's domestic policies like socialized medicine, nationalizing companies, massive debt-fueled pork give-aways, and the capping and taxing of America's energy consumption is that Iran is getting closer and closer to obtaining a nuclear bomb. Iran getting the nuclear bomb would be very bad for the world. They will use it to blackmail our allies and expand their control over the Middle East, they might use it to murder millions of Jews, or they could sell it to terrorist groups who would unleash it on an American city. This is a big deal.

As big a deal as it is, what has Obama's response been? Offering to talk to Iranian officials? Backing the Iranian government as it killed and terrorized pro-democracy groups that tried to rise up in freedom and liberty? Issuing declarations that are ignored? Those aren't very strong steps and are not having a positive effect on the situation. Different steps need to be taken and different messages issued. Perhaps Obama can do these things, but I'm pretty sure that we are going to need a different Congress and different President or else Iran will mushroom cloud an American city.

2010 is coming to an end, and like any year in which our nation was run by progressive liberal Democrats, it was a year of change, crisis, calamity, and collapsing values and systems. You probably can't even remember all of the major events that marked 2010 under Democratic control- times were just too darn interesting to keep all of the events close to short term memory. This shouldn't be a surprise- I predicted these sort of years in my post shortly after the election of 2008 called May you Live in Interesting Times.

"May you live in interesting times" is actually a Chinese curse. Uninteresting times, such as the 1920's, 1950's, 1990's, or early 2000's, were times of very little upheaval, of steady but unspectacular economic growth, of domestic tranquility, and rather boring cultural changes. But some people though don't like peace, tranquility, steady growth, and static cultural norms- they want change. And once you start changing things, times get interesting- but usually not better. And 2010 proves the case.

Looking back, 2010 rivals only 2009 as years when the most change occurred- rock-solid companies collapsed, major stunning environmental disasters unfolded, people were shockingly fired, rogue nations made surprising advances in acquiring weapons of mass destruction, and there were major leaks of intelligence. 2010 was sure an interesting year!

Jib-Jab sums it up in usual humorous fashion. Enjoy!

Check out Terry Pratchett's book Interesting Times for a good read! Or better yet, since it is Christmas time, for a good laugh and a fun read check out Pratchett's Hogfather- Death plays the role of Santa and saves cultural norms!

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