Butterfly in the Home Studio

Here's a new still life set up that I created at home this summer.  The subject is a blue morpho butterfly that I bought in New York from the American Museum of Natural History. It's the amazing  iridescence and sheen of the wings that appeal to me. I want to see how close to the real thing I can get by using an indirect method of painting.

That's where I will first paint the blues as they appear. Then I'll cover them with a layer of white -- the brighter the blue on the wings, the thicker the layer of white that goes on top. Once the white dries, I'll start glazing over the white again with the original blues, using multiple thin and transluscent layers. This should make the blues glow brighter than if I simply mixed blue and white directly. I'm going to try out a few other subtle tricks to help give the illusion of light and a sheeny, slick surface.

In front of the butterfly are three other elements: a pile of powder blue pigment (a souvenir from Rome), a small jar which will be filled partly with linseed oil, and a fan brush dipped in the power and oil. It's the powdered pigment and the oil that are combined to make the paint that we squeeze out in tubes. This manufactured blue itself will never match the magnificence of the butterfly's wing's and perhaps that's the theme to the piece.

My point of observation is about 7 feet from the stand and from the easel. In that spot, I'm facing neither the stand nor the easel directly, and for that reason the cutting board is not perfectly horizontal. In fact, it appears to rise up on one side. I did this deliberately to create more dynamic shadows and angles, to mimic the angles found in the wings.

Below is the quick "dead colour" state of the painting so far whereby paint and mineral spirits combined provide the first thin, "matte" or flat layer of paint.  I'll start on the wings properly next.

Indirect Painting again -- three Saturdays

I'm still learning about this method called indirect painting. For a couple of weeks in a row, I've built up a layer of opaque white on the red cloth. The whitest white is supposed to represent the brightest part of the cloth, a brightness that can't be achieved any other way. The white painting sitting on top of my previous layers of cadmium red became quite tacky and slow to dry. I finally achieved what was needed on March 6th. A week later it was dry enough to put a thin layer of cadmium red back on top (March 13th). Finally, last week (March 20th), I added a second glaze of cadmium red and began trying to model the shape of the roll in the cloth, as well as the cloth's shadows. The shadows are a mixture of Alizarin Crimson and Cadmium Red. The lightest areas of the roll are probably as light now as I need them to be and I can darken the edges and the shadows in the next few weeks...

Saturday March 6

Saturday March 13

Saturday March 20

Mixing the green in the leaves has been another challenge. While it's easy to mix a solid green of high chroma (a "green" green), it's more difficult to tone down that greenness to make it seem more natural. I have the values correct, but my leaves are oppresively green. I first added Cadmium Orange to my mix, but that resulted in an odd warming effect, like a leaf in autumn about to turn. What I need to do is mix in Burnt Umber, whose "redness" is the complimentary of green and will "grey down" the green. Another way of achieving the same thing is to mix in a neutral "grey" (made by combining ivory black, raw umber, and white). An infusion of grey drains a colour of its chroma -- in my case, it should dull down the green very quickly.

I'll take some close-ups next time. These pictures were taken about 10 feet back from the easel and then cropped...

Indirect Painting -- getting a start on it

Today, I moved on modelling the white pot, laid down some fresh green on the leaves, and then got a start on something new with the cloth: Indirect Painting.

Background: Some colours are so bright and intense that there's no way to mix the paint to achieve realistic highlights. If you merely mix white and red to achieve a lighter red, pink will result. The same thing will happen with some bright greens, blues, and violets. In my still life exercise here, I have a bright red cloth (almost pure cadmium red) with a large roll in it. I tried modelling the lightest part of the roll with cadmium orange and yellow mixed in with the red, but even that didn't brighten up the area in the way I wanted... So that's why indirect painting has to be done.

Here's the general idea: To achieve highlights, a coat of white is put down first over the original local colour (cadmium red). When the white dries, glazes of red are reapplied and the white shines through, not as pink but as a lighter red.

To begin, the original layer of red must be completely dry so that the fresh white doesn't combine with it to make pink. A small test confirms this. Next, pure white is added in all areas where the cloth is a lighter red than its local colour, in my case pure cadmium red, a perfect 5 on the value scale of 0 to 9. Where the red cloth is at its lightest, I applied the white paint at its full intensity. (Note: Juan recommended mixing some calcium carbonate to my flake white to ensure it would be as opaque as possible). As I move from the lightest red to the local colour red, I thin out and blend the white paint towards the pure red.

Two brushes are needed: one to lay down the pure white, and one absolutely clean brush to blend it out and lift it off as your move to the darker reds... (The mantra I think is: brush in, brush out)

In my picture below, the whitest whites are where the cloth shows off the lightest reds...

In two weeks' time, this white will be dry. Then I'll begin adding glazes of red on top. There no harm in having the white too white; I can always darken later. But the reverse is not true: If after applying the red glazes I find that the highlights are not bright enough because the white underneath was not opaque enough, then tough luck. It's too late to fix it.