Wednesday, March 30, 2005
It has been a while
I have been running around as usual and have not been able to post in a long time. I will respond to anything that I posted earlier at a later date.
I am currently painting a portrait of my wife. I started the painting with a light charcoal placement. and then used a verdaccio wash to get the canvas toned in the mixture of Chromium Oxide, Ivory Black, and Flake white that I have used on the last three of my paintings.
I started painting the picture by getting a blocked in placement. It went like that for a while of which I painted more of what I knew and it was getting me frustrated, because I was painting the values being to timid with my lights and darks. I had read that you do not want to go to dark and too light too early in an underpainting. Maybe I am working to hard on the underpainting I am not to sure at the moment but I went and laid in the values exactly as I see them on my computer screen, there is at least 9 values in the underpainting.
I still was not getting what I wanted though as I would look at the screen and then look at my canvas and try to guess what was the right value. It looked somewhat realistic at this point but I was still not getting what I was aiming for. This is when my CD-ROM from Timothy C. Tyler arrived. He is an amazing artist that I have been studying as of late. In the CD-ROM my eyes were opened a little more, as Timothy said in his disk I do not have the exact wording but, he said that he would have his students mix there paint as close to what they new it to be right and then take their paint brush and hold it up to the subject. If the paint disappeared then he had the right color. I have tried this and it seems to work better and quicker than my previous methods. As I am getting the exact values in my underpainting.
I have had to repaint and soften a great deal of my underpainting as I have switched lighting to a more natural screw in fluorescent light. I have two 6500k 90 CRI bulbs that produce about 800 lumens each. It really makes a difference from the yellow house light I was using prior.
Oh well I have a few more refinements to my wife's hair and her arm that need to be done yet before I will say that the underpainting is completed. Then I will move on to color. There is a little bit of a glossy sheen that is been produced in her face and hair that I do not exactly like at this point as I have a lot of layers already built up there. I hopefully will lower the number of layers that I build up in the next painting, of which I will most likely begin changing my Thene easier that way later on in the painting once you are into the color.
Oh well that is all the time I have for now so I will post again soon.
Roger,
webmaster/portrait painter
http://www.oilstrokes.com
http://www.thewhitewidow.com
I am currently painting a portrait of my wife. I started the painting with a light charcoal placement. and then used a verdaccio wash to get the canvas toned in the mixture of Chromium Oxide, Ivory Black, and Flake white that I have used on the last three of my paintings.
I started painting the picture by getting a blocked in placement. It went like that for a while of which I painted more of what I knew and it was getting me frustrated, because I was painting the values being to timid with my lights and darks. I had read that you do not want to go to dark and too light too early in an underpainting. Maybe I am working to hard on the underpainting I am not to sure at the moment but I went and laid in the values exactly as I see them on my computer screen, there is at least 9 values in the underpainting.
I still was not getting what I wanted though as I would look at the screen and then look at my canvas and try to guess what was the right value. It looked somewhat realistic at this point but I was still not getting what I was aiming for. This is when my CD-ROM from Timothy C. Tyler arrived. He is an amazing artist that I have been studying as of late. In the CD-ROM my eyes were opened a little more, as Timothy said in his disk I do not have the exact wording but, he said that he would have his students mix there paint as close to what they new it to be right and then take their paint brush and hold it up to the subject. If the paint disappeared then he had the right color. I have tried this and it seems to work better and quicker than my previous methods. As I am getting the exact values in my underpainting.
I have had to repaint and soften a great deal of my underpainting as I have switched lighting to a more natural screw in fluorescent light. I have two 6500k 90 CRI bulbs that produce about 800 lumens each. It really makes a difference from the yellow house light I was using prior.
Oh well I have a few more refinements to my wife's hair and her arm that need to be done yet before I will say that the underpainting is completed. Then I will move on to color. There is a little bit of a glossy sheen that is been produced in her face and hair that I do not exactly like at this point as I have a lot of layers already built up there. I hopefully will lower the number of layers that I build up in the next painting, of which I will most likely begin changing my Thene easier that way later on in the painting once you are into the color.
Oh well that is all the time I have for now so I will post again soon.
Roger,
webmaster/portrait painter
http://www.oilstrokes.com
http://www.thewhitewidow.com
