Fresh background for the still life

I spent last night resaturating the background with a solid, fresh layer of ivory black/pale yellow ochre (which makes the green of the wall) and linseed oil, and blending it into the edges of the bottle. I also took the opportunity to repaint the bottle with a higher chroma green (Sap Green) and to lose some of its edges into the wet background. I'm not so concerned now with getting a symmetrical shape and the outline of the real bottle does get lost in places. But I still have to see how things look after the paint dries. In the meantime, I'll move on to other areas...

Update on the Battle of Cascina (charcoal and chalk)

I haven't spent much time on this drawing since May but thought I'd post a new view of it as an incentive to continue. The project began a year ago August (click here to view earlier blog entry below) as an exercise to see how well charcoal and white chalk work together on toned paper. I began by concentrating on particular areas, but now realize it's best to take a systematic approach and deal with all dark areas first before venturing into the lights (it's so easy to overdo the white highlights). So I'll be shifting over to the second figure on my next pass...

Wayne's Portrait (continued...)

Since posting my last update on this painting (when I described cropping the painting),  I've been concentrating on finishing the shirt and shorts, with the aim of making the folds and edges softer. I also repainted the left arm/hand (the one in shadow) and face, but still need to reshape the eye slightly. After that, repainting the other arm is at the top of my list of things to do. Once that's done, I'll finish the background once and for all: the drapes, the window panes, and the view beyond. Much of the background drapery has now sunk into the canvas, which is OK. The real challenge will be depicting the window panes with their own reflections and streaks on top of the exterior scene.

Update on the Red, White and Green Still Life

It's been a long while since I've posted a photo of this still life in progress. Fortunately, the list of things to do before finishing this painting of is growing shorter.

I painted the wine bottle in yesterday, using only high chroma greens (vermillion, sap green, and a bit of pale yellow ochre -- no white). Trouble is, the real green background (a mix of ivory black and pale yellow ochre) has long since sunk into the panel so I haven't really been able to blend the bottle back in. In the next session, I'll repaint the background with the green and linseed oil and blend the edges of the bottle into it. I also need to make the outline of the bottle more symmetrical, even though the real bottle is flawed (I keep insisting it is, anyway). One trick suggested: on the computer, trace the outline of one side, then flip it over and lay it over the other side. That should tell me how to correct the other side.

The red cloth just needs a few minor touches. The far right edge needs to be darker and greyer to suggest that it's receding in the distance. This should help make the front of the cloth jump out even more. Other final touches: repainting the leaves and toning down the highlights, and adding a few more scratches/eteches into the edge of the board.

Indirect Painting for Texture

The still life at the school is progressing. Nearly every area is ready now for the second painting stage except for the cloth. In the winter, I painted several layers of white over areas of the the red (an indirect painting technique) to create the foundation for highlights, primarily on the front flap and the middle of the roll. Later I applied several glazes of red back over the white areas, and then the highlights I wanted emerged. What I didn't get was a sense of texture. The cloth has a strong weave in two directions and its edges are very frayed. I should have built that texture into my original layers of white when doing the indirect painting because I can't achieve it with the cadmium red paint on its own. So I'm back at it again. Over the last month, I've applied several fine white lines and white blobs to mimic the pattern. Now when I re-glaze it with red the pattern should be retained... We'll see.

Surgery -- unfortunate, avoidable, but necessary this time

I've been stuck for a long time on this painting. I thought my challenge was dealing with the large windows but the real issue was one of distorted proportions that I unwittingly made in the figure. Most of the distortion takes place in the legs and it is grows proportionately the farther down you go. In the photo below, the source photo is placed to the right of a photo of the painting. Using the head as a measuring unit, my painted figure ends up being half a head too short. This is something I should have checked at the cartoon stage before transferring the drawing. I didn't leave myself enough room on the bottom of the canvas to fix it so..... off with his legs! (Sorry Wayne)

The revised composition is below. I restretched the canvas over 12x18 stretchers and I like the result. I started painting in a background through the windows and will add details of the deck in the lower 2 pane. I also began reworking the figure's facial features, moving the eye and lips down. Next session, the cheekbone will be moved down as well and widened.

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.

Colour Mixing

While I'm ever so slowly building up the colour again on the clothe with successive glazes of cadmium red, I'm stopping to let the other areas of the painting catch up. First the leaves. The chroma has been too intense a green for several weeks. I tried several different mixtures to dull the chroma. Adding cadmium orange, and later burnt umber, didn't work for me. In theory, the compliment of red in the burnt umber or a close complimentary in orange should have done the trick, but only made them "hotter". So I think mixed a range of neutral grey values and added each to the range of greens on my largest leaf -- in equal measure... And now the greens are cooling off.

This week I'm going to tackle the background. It only has a first thin layer of dead colour on it. The correct recipe for the background green is ivory black + yellow ocre + some burnt umber... We debated at the school whether I should paint over the outline of the bottle completely and then paint the bottle on top. Bottle, being transclucent, would have some background green showing throw... But it in the real life set up, it's a different green (blue green, mostly vermillion) and the right edge of it is very prominent. So the consensus is to paint the bottle as I see it at the same time as the background and then blend the edges in.  One edge I need to deal with a.s.a.p is the place where the clothe recedes into the background. I have yet to turn it away from the front and blend it into the green wall.

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...