Monday, November 5, 2007

heads or tails - on the wall

The Heads or Tails show opened on Friday (2 Nov). Here is "quiet" on the wall:

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

heads & tails - the final glaze

Here she is! I glazed her body and the background twice since the last post (the interim glaze did not show enough of a difference to merit a posting). I also glazed the water with a weak layer of Payne's Gray. She'd now in a frame and I will deliver her to the Moca Gallery today.



Opening night is Friday, November 2, 2007 at the Moca Gallery.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

heads & tails - color saturation glazes

So I am running out of time! This painting needs to be in Georgetown (DC) on Wednesday. That means dry, framed, and labeled. But no worries -- after today, I probably only need to touch it one more time.

Today I focused on brining out the colors. So I glazed the background greenery with Sap Green and Prussian Blue, with a bit of Lemon Yellow for highlights. I glazed the area between the trees and the goddess with Lemon Yellow to make it look like she in lying in a well-lit clearing on the water. That will help make the bright highlights on her body make sense. I glazed the shadowed areas of her body with burnt umber. I touched up the rock with Prussian Blue and a purple made from Alizarin Crimson/Prussian Blue. Using the fat-over-lean principle I added more dark "highlights" to her hair (it is interesting how she still looks blond, but now most of her hair color is in the dark range -- the blond look is from the original Yellow Ochre that shows through as highlights). I also worked a bit more on her reflection, trying to get it to parallel her actual self more closely.

Notice how much more vibrant the color is after today's glaze. If I had more time, I would glaze her body several more times to make it "pop" out of the canvas. After the November show, I will continue to glaze her -- that is one of the great things about oils: more paint can always be added.



Total time today: 3 hours.

Friday, October 26, 2007

heads & tails - more glazing

The glazing continues -- body, leaves, rock, reflection. The color becomes more alive with each added layer. Is it done yet? No -- but I am not sure if it will require one, two, or three more glazes. Stay tuned...



Total time today: 2.5 hours.

Friday, October 19, 2007

heads & tails - glazing

Today I added another glaze to her body. I applied first glazes to the rock and background. The body colors were again a combination of Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Umber, and Prussian Blue. The rock and shadow below her body are the same colors, but with a heavier use of blue. The background was done first with Sap Green and then some Terra Verte was used in a few places.



Total time today was 2.5 hours. I spent the first 20 minutes just mixing the colors. Here is a shot of what my palette looked like:

Friday, October 12, 2007

heads & tails - beginning a painting

For the Moca DC Gallery show "Heads and Tails" that begins November 1st, I decided to paint an image from a beautiful photograph. That photograph is here:



The first step, the underpainting, was done in raw umber. The entire canvas is covered in an umber mid-tone, which is then wiped away to reveal light areas and more concentrated umber is used for the dark areas. This underpainting took about three hours (note, the photograph is 8x10; the painting is 16x20):



Notice that I have changed the positioning of her body a bit, to allow her head to show (I did not want her to look like she was decapitated). Therefore, I brought her shoulders closer. My art teacher thought that it would better if there was water in the foreground instead of leaves, so I have tried to add that and to show a partial reflection of her.

After letting the underpainting dry for a week, I next glazed her body with a transparent mixture of Alizarin Crimson, Indian Yellow, and Prussian Blue. I used varying values of that mixture for the light and dark areas. I glazed her hair with a transparent mixture of Indian Yellow and Raw Sienna. I used the Indian Yellow to highlight leafy areas where the sun is brightly shining. I used a more blue version of the flesh color to capture the shadowed areas of the rock. The result was the first glaze, which took about two hours:

Thursday, October 4, 2007

heads and tails - kicking around some ideas

I am thinking about completing a piece for Moca DC Gallery's "Heads and Tails" themed show on November 1st. Here I am experimenting with positioning and color of a few photographs I have on hand.

a mother's love in spring


This piece was inspired by a photograph in a wildlife magazine. I tried to capture the motion of the feisty, energetic polar bear cub as its mother mindfully watches (and seems to smile). I exhibited this piece at the Falls Church Arts show Lions and Tigers and Bears in June 2007 and at the Moca DC Gallery in August 2007.