Reds and Greens

A few weeks ago, I took the Patroclus painting into the school and picked up a few tips from David Gluck, including:

• Using Cadmium Red for the red blanket rather than Indian Red (too dull and cool)


• Building up the contained shadows on the blanket with darker values of Cadmium Red (mixed with Ivory Black). Previous shadows were too muddy and grey.


• Cooling the brightest areas of the figure with Green Umber and Yellow Ochre to enhance the 3D effect. This led to new concepts for me about using colours to suggest form the same way I've been using values to model forms (lights, shadows, half-tones, bedbug lines, etc).
  
  

I have yet to work again on the figure, but over the Victoria Holiday weekend, I managed to finish the first painting of the red blanket and the surrounding area. I forgot my Winsor and Newton Artist oil paints at home but bought some replacements at a local store. These were from the Winsor and Newton "Winton" line of oil paints, which are cheaper than the professional line I'm used to because they contain less pigment and more vehicle (linseed oil)--making them good to apply in large spaces. I used them to finish the first layer of the foreground.



In the original painting, David added an archer's bow and a scattering of arrows around the edge of the blanket. Because my canvas is larger than the original, with more space around the figure, I've decided to add only a limited number of the original arrows. I've marked their place on the right side but have yet to add any detail.