Portrait Drawing Lessons:
Drawing Children: The Tondo Canvas

Portrait Drawing Lessons: Thomas Lawrence

Sir Thomas Lawrence, Portrait of
the Honorable George Fane, 1819

The circular canvas (whose term is tondo) last saw its heyday in the early half of the nineteenth century. Popular since the early Greek and Roman empires and the Renaissance the tondo canvas enjoyed a special status particularly in the genre of portraiture.

Illustrated here are two exemplary tondo works by the British painter Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769 - 1830). Lawrence was a salon painter of the first rank – he derived a handsome livelihood from painting portraits of many of England’s esteemed families.

The Calmady Children rank amongst the finest of children’s portraits of the Regency period of the early 19th Century and is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Drawing Lessons - The Drawing EZine

Get even better portrait drawing lessons every month!

Drawing EZine subscribers receive high quality, high resolution drawing lessons in PDF format. And it's FREE!

There's no obligation and your privacy is ensured. We never, ever sell, rent, lend nor in any way give your email address to anyone.

The Artacademy Drawing
EZine

Name

Email


I have included large images of these two paintings at the conclusion of this lesson. There are many lessons to be derived copying these two works.

The tondo canvas by dint of its annular shape commands a circular compositional rhythm. This, of course, may seem obvious, but a composition that works well in a rectangular canvas will not transpose to the tondo. There are very few tondo landscapes or still lifes (although tondo still lifes enjoyed a short lived popularity in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries they have been relegated to the status of minor art forms).

Portraits of children work particularly well in the tondo canvas. The circular rhythms are faster and lighter than what can be attained in a rectangular shape.

Portrait Drawing Lessons: Calmady Children
Sir Thomas Lawrence, The Calmady
Children, 1824

You cannot belabor a portrait drawing of a child. A sure, efficient route is required and a somewhat ‘unfinished’ quality works best. A highly polished approach to drawing children quite often results in a stilted and stiff work.

The method that I used for this drawing is a mostly subtractive process of blocking in and painting out with a kneaded eraser. Facial forms, such as the cheeks and muzzle (the lower part of the face) are more suggested than rendered. Line is used only as necessary as an external armature to hold the suggested forms in place. This is also the case with Thomas Lawrence’s tondo portrait of young George Fane (previous page): only the eyes, nose and interstice of the mouth and an occasional curl of hair are articulated.
Portrait Drawing Lessons: Children-Tondo-1
Portrait Drawing Lessons: Children-Tondo-2

The medium that I chose for this drawing is a soft 4B black conte crayon (2B works just as well) on Fabriano Ingres charcoal paper. The approach that I am demonstrating can also be done with charcoal. My preference is for conte and is purely a personal one. I used a 10” plastic dinner plate to draw a circle. Using a compass will result in a small hole puncturing the paper and you can bet that that hole will be in a critical spot.

Sizing and placing the arabesque within the tondo is an all important initial decision. Unlike the rectangular canvas you cannot shave off an edge to fine-tune the composition. Negative shape plays an equal role to the positive shape. Remember that the tondo proffers a circular movement – the pose of this portrait strongly suggests a counter-clockwise rhythm.

Usually in a 3/4 view you would leave a little psychological breathing space. Here I did not: the gaze of the eyes will counteract this current imbalance.

Artacademy.com
Artacademy.com | Drawing Lessons

Copyright © 1998-2012 Artacademy.com. All rights reserved.