The Art of Holding Back in Watercolor Portraits

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Following the lead of her favorite authors, watercolor artist Melanie Norris paints just enough of a portrait to let the character come through.

By Ann Emmert Abbott

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“I’m a bookworm,” says Melanie Norris, explaining the influence of Paul Harding’s 2009 novel Tinkers on her painting series of the same name. “In Tinkers, the writing is incredibly visual; the author doesn’t need to be explicit. That resonates with me stylistically.” Norris’s watercolor portraits follow suit.

“There’s a beauty in not saying everything, not putting everything out there,” she says. “Society has become very explicit, and even crude in a way.” In a sort of counterweight to this trend, Norris employs a restraint similar to Harding’s — in her “Tinkers” series and other work — providing just enough of a physical representation to glimpse the underlying character of her subject.

Calling All Characters

Although she admires beautiful language and imagery, Norris is quick to admit that in her personal work (as opposed to commissioned portraits), she doesn’t set out to paint subjects in a particularly flattering way. This means that finding models can be tricky.

“I’m painting whatever’s in my head at the time,” Norris says. “In a horrible way, I’m manipulating a subject’s physical shell for my own ideas, so people sometimes are hesitant to let me paint them. If I’m trying something new, or if I’m not confident with what I’m doing, I’ll often just paint myself instead of someone else.”

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That Degas Aesthetic

In this way, Norris relates to Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917). “He painted these young ballet dancers so lovingly and so beautifully that people thought he had some romantic relation or admiration for them,” she says.

“But his letters and writings say otherwise. He maintained that they were just something to paint — vehicles for form and color. I wouldn’t consider my attitude toward my subjects that harsh, but I do relate to what he was saying.”

Her aesthetic is tied to not wanting to “share everything” in her watercolor portraits. Watercolor, as a medium, helps her achieve that restrained, fill-in-the-blanks effect she enjoys in great literature. “I’m drawn to watercolor because of the way it moves across the painting surface. The way I use it, it leaves a lot open — literally and figuratively,” she says. “This opening serves as a window to the character I’m depicting.”

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Painting Large

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The artist paints her portraits on canvas primed with watercolor gesso in a variety of sizes, and often builds to larger and larger sizes as a series progresses. The watercolor portraits in “Tinkers,” she says, grew in size as she got more comfortable with the idea of the series. “The first paintings I did in ‘Tinkers’ were 24×36-ish,” she says. “Then I went to 36 inches square, then to 48 inches square, and finally to 60×48 inches for The Receiver.” This final painting, what Norris calls the capstone of the series, “exploded” onto the canvas. It was a pose, she says, that “just came to me. I wanted to show the subject, who happens to be my husband, just receiving. Not challenging the viewer by looking at us or by looking away.”

For a large painting like The Receiver, Norris puts the canvas on the floor and literally stands over it to work, using large, flat, angled brushes.

“I use cheap brushes not necessarily made for watercolor,” she says. “I just use what I have. These brushes work for me and the way I use watercolor. I lay paint down and it flows, then I use the angle of the brush to shape it a little bit once it reaches a certain point.”

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No Time to Think

For The Receiver, she sketched out the shape of the face, then “threw paint at the surface,” creating large puddles of color that she then worked into place. Norris created this final piece in the series in close preparation for a show. “I painted The Receiver in the throes of trying to get ready for an exhibit, so it was very much on a deadline. I always do my best work on a deadline, like the night before. There’s no time to step back and think; I just have to go with it. I’d been painting larger and larger, and I had been painting constantly up until this piece. I just hit this flow, and that’s where really beautiful paintings come from. It’s one of my favorites. The Springfield Museum of Art has it now.”

A Freeing Technique

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Creating in this way is technically freeing, Norris says. “Painting on canvas rather than paper is how I’m able to paint so large. It was incredible finding out about watercolor gesso. I’m not patient enough to figure out the logistics of matting and framing paper. Plus, I don’t want my watercolors to be formal. I want them to have this raw quality where they’re just in the room, not framed behind glass. I want them to be a presence.”

The surface is similar to hot-pressed paper, she says, although recently she’s started to gesso over raw canvas, and that surface is a little rougher and more absorbent. “Right now, I’m slowly building up this library of knowledge as far as the materials I use. It’s a process of trial and error,” she says. Her approach is to try things and allow herself to get a little frustrated if something doesn’t work. “I always learn from whatever I try — whether it succeeds or fails.”

An All-In Process

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Typically, Norris sketches out the general shapes and makes notations on the eyes, nose, and mouth. She uses a watercolor pencil on gessoed canvas and graphite if she’s working on paper. Then, “I just start,” she says. “It’s not a very involved drawing process, typically.” Norris doesn’t lay down brushstrokes of watercolor either, but rather pools washes on the surface and then uses her large angled brushes to control the paint and move it around. “I have a little palette,” she says, “with big blobs of paint close to one another. I get my brush wet, and I just touch whatever colors I want, and then I lay them down with the brush.”

She then adds water to the surface and lets the paint mix on the canvas. “It’s intuitive,” she says. “I paint very quickly. At this point, there’s not a lot of deliberation with color or in regard to where to put things. It goes fast, and I tighten up as I go.” She pauses to let layers dry, then adds another layer, and then another.

“Once I get to the layer where I’m painting a deep color, like a shadow around a nose, I think about it a little bit more,” she says.

Skip the Drawing

Lately, she doesn’t draw at all in her preparatory work. “In the piece I’m doing now, the drawing is becoming obsolete,” Norris says.

“In Breath, for example, I didn’t do an initial drawing. The lines came after the paint was laid down. When Breath was done, it needed lines, so I sketched over it with oil pastel.” Often, Norris says, when her watercolor portraits get “really loose and really free,” she adds lines to anchor them.

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Abstracted Ideas

Just as The Receiver was a capstone to “Tinkers,” Breath was a transition into Norris’ “Hallucinations” series. The paintings Pattern and Light are also part of this new series. These three watercolor portraits, she says, represent a shifting away from “characters” into more abstracted ideas. “Those three, in particular, are part of the ‘Migraine’ sub-series. Exploring how the mind imposes itself on the character, the personality, the brain, the chemistry of that,” she says.

“The ‘Hallucinations’ series is just now forming in my head,” Norris says, “so finding the words to explain it is difficult.” But once again, it’s a series based on a book she admires. This time, it’s Hallucinations (Vintage, 2013), by neuroscientist Oliver Sacks. “Hallucinations, the publication, is basically about how the mind can hijack itself,” Norris says. “The book is about neurological disorders, but it reads so well. It’s beautifully written. Right now, I’m in the process of researching more on the idea of the mind as a portrait.”

She may want to articulate the ideas that are forming in this series, but then again, perhaps she won’t have to say much about it at all.

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Ann Emmert Abbott is a freelance writer living in Cincinnati, Ohio.

This article was first featured in Watercolor Artist magazine. Subscribe today for more incredible watercolor techniques and inspiration!

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