Whitcomb Demo

Jon Whitcomb, the king of American glamour illustration in the 1950s, shares his step-by-step method for how to paint a head in transparent wash:

Step 1. “Over softly penciled outlines, Whitcomb paints a light gray tone, which begins to establish the shadow area of his picture. After this has dried completely, he paints a medium gray tone over it, but stops short of the edge of the first wash. This light edge — you can see it on the forehead and neck, tends to soften the division between the light and shadow areas.”

Step 2. “Whitcomb establishes the over-all tonal effect early. First he paints a light wash over the entire skin area, the eyes, and teeth. Then, with ink, he paints the blacks: hair, eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, and corners of the mouth. He has left the light-struck areas of the hair white because he is still working in bold, flat areas of tone, with no serious effort yet at modeling.”

Step 3. “Now that the light and dark areas of the drawing are definitely established, the artist starts working within these areas to model such forms as the jawbone, nostrils, lips, etc. Observe how he uses the graded wash to suggest the rounding of the forehead. He also starts modeling the hair in the light areas, leaving the white of the paper for the high lights.”

Step 4. “The modeling is completed, but Whitcomb has not lost his strong, simple pattern of whites, blacks, and grays. Notice the subtle modeling on the girl’s lighter cheek. Some edges of the hair he has softened with a damp brush. With small touches of opaque white and grays he has added sparkling high lights. He has softened the edge between light and shadow on chin and neck with touches of thin opaque.”

Demo is from the Famous Artists Course

More Whitcomb samples online at Leif Peng’s Flickr Set
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