Hey everybody! Hope you’ve all been well.
Figured I’d share a couple pieces I’ve been picking at in my spare time recently.
I keep starting new stuff, which is good because I’m finding it best to have a few things going in various stages that I can pick up on depending on mood, time, etc.
Now that I’m old and also live with four small humans who require parenting assistance, the days of sitting down and banging out a piece in one session are mostly on hold until they hit puberty.
Actually kind of dig working more incrementally like this as it allows for longer gestation times in between passes. I can run through the next steps over and over in my head until it’s a solid game plan, instead of just the usual approach of just rushing in and making a mess.
For example, this is this portrait of our youngest son, Martin I started a little while back.
Started as a greyscale painting. Spent a couple of sittings getting the drawing and forms to a place I felt ok about. Then I sat on it for a while.
A couple weeks later, I got a tube of that YInMn blue paint, and wanted to try it on something, so I applied a thin glaze of it on top of the grayscale painting. Didn’t really know what I was hoping to accomplish with it, just more wanted to use it on something.
Looked kind of cool…I dunno, it’s a blue. It did help begin to introduce some texture to the surface so there’s that.
I’ll def use it for something but dunno if I’d adopt “ a glaze of YInMn blue” into my typical portrait process.
Let it sit on the easel and started a some other stuff until eventually got sick of it staring at me, so I decided to do something a bit more drastic and applied a vermillion wash over the entire thing.
Sometimes you gotta punch yourself in the face to remind yourself that you’re still alive.
I let that sit for a few days, and then I poured turpenoid all over it and wiped some of it off.
By allowing it to sit and “set” I had to scrub it a little hard. Some areas were already dry and remained that bbq sauce color. I tried to remove paint in a way that made sense, and also created some fun abstract textures I could try to play off of.
From there I went in and dry brushed some grays, greens, violets and even more red selectively here and there, trying to save some of the forms and also aiming to bring the figure and the background together more. And that’s where I’m at with this one.
Here are a couple of other in-progress pictures I’ve got on the easel right now.
I started this one of our daughter a little while back, and have slowly been fixing stuff and glazing back into it.
I like where its going but up close theres some pretty mushy forms happening here and there.
Fighting the hard temptation to do something drastic to it. YInMn blue wash??What’s the worst that could happen? Lol
Also been picking away at this little painting of the barn I work out of. Began with a monochrome underpainting under a fairly loose pencil drawing. Only got tight on the Structure as I wanted to get the perspective worked out early.
step 1
step 2
step ????
Started rendering with the barn…everything else is washes right now. Thought it made sense to start there and let it kind of inform how to deal with the rest of it.
Really looking forward to the field. Got some fun ideas of how to deal with it and There may be rollers involved 🙂
Really cool pieces, thanks for sharing the WIP shots!
When you’re building up areas in washes like the foliage In your barn painting, do you reach a stage where you’re working with opaque paints? Do you have any tips for working with translucent and opaque layers, particularly for something fiddly and textured like grass or other vegetation? I find when I try to work that way I end up covering up all of my lower translucent layers with opaque paint and just re-describing everything in one wet into wet pass
Thanks Erik! Yes I eventually will go in with plaques on the foliage. I will usually build up with glazes until the values feel right, then I will carefully apply opaque paint on top. I dont repaint everything, and instead just kind of selectively put opaque paint where I want to add interest and sharpen details. It’s a balance, but from my experience the trick is to get both to work together as opposed to repainting the whole thing.