When Oil Paint goes to sleep

A few weeks ago, I decided to repaint the background and especially the bottle. I hadn't touched my background since I first laid down the dark greens and it was bothering me, especially where the bottle meets the cloth. The bottle has its own rich local colour, a kind of cool, bluish green that differs from the green wall, and yet it sits in front of the wall so some of the wall has to be seen inside the bottle. Later, highlights and reflections will be added to the bottle.

What surprised me was how quickly the background dried and then faded away into the linen. It's now a kind of dull matte and the bottle green is almost lost in the wall green. Apparently, the expression used is that the paint has gone "dormant" and won't reawaken until it is varnished.

The first photo below shows what the background looked like immediately after I applied it. The second shows the impact of drying, one week later.

Perspective on Wayne's portrait

Work resumes on Wayne's portrait, which I first began last July. I stopped last fall after completing a "first painting" of the figure, knowing full that I'd be making corrections to the expression and shadows later. What I forgot then was the importance of the background to most portraits, and how the values there determine what range of values are acceptable in the figure. For that reason, backgrounds are normally laid in roughly first.

And in academic painting (my style of realism I've learned to paint in) every area should be treated equally at every step along the way. So I'm catching up on the background before I return to the figure.

Wayne's portrait is unusual for me in a couple of ways. The light pouring through the windows, as shown in the photo, bleaches the clothing and face, flattening them, and making it more difficult to convey form. This is so different from an indoor studio portrait where the light source is at a distance from the figure and doesn't dominate or compete for attention. Colour is much more convincing too.

Perspective is another challenge. There are lines in the windows, walls, and floor that lead the eye into the distance, towards a vanishing point that happens to be a few inches off the right side of the canvas. I ignored these in my preparatory drawing and should have taken more care. The old camera I used last fall badly distorted those perspective lines making it less useful as a reference point. To correct the painting, I decided to figure out the lines myself by using pieces of string. Luckily, I'm working on this portrait at the cottage, where Wayne posed, so I just take my eyes of the canvas, and paint what I see around me.

Below are two photos, the first showing the strings I used for finding perspective, and the second showing the results after I removed the strings. There is still much to do to make the background convincing but at least I'm making progress.