For the past month or more I have been working towards finishing my latest painting. I thought it would be interesting for me to spell out the steps I have taken with this painting. For those of you who are artists you know what I mean when I say that once I stop work on a painting I sometimes forget the steps I took to reach that result. Oh sure, I remember the overall experience and the tricks I learned but I rarely recall the earlier stages of the painting. Therefore, I'm hoping that by making this a standard practice for each piece I will be more likely to develop more standardized methods for working.
Step one is preparing the canvas. Here I have applied a neutral grey to the canvas. This grey matches closely to the grey palette I have chosen for my paints. I find that working on white tends to skew my colors a great deal.
This canvas is 30" x 40". I enlarged my 8 x 10 line drawing and transfered this to the canvas so that I have a road map to work from. Then I apply a layer of clear gesso to seal the line drawing to the canvas (otherwise the line drawing would be removed with the first application of paint).
For my palette I tape a sheet of Grey Matters Paper to a card palette. Since this grey is similar to the grey used for priming my canvas it will help me keep my colors more accurate.
I have recently become intrigued by Whistler's monochromatic paintings so I decided to try a more limited palette that focuses on purple. Every color aspect of the piece will have an element of purple added to the color.
Working from my reference photos that I shot earlier I attempt to portray the model using the given palette. This stage is more difficult for me than other stages as I try to get as close to the model as I can.
Closer view of the profile. Once it dries I will apply thinner washes of color to bring out the contrast more. You can also see here how the line work still remains.
I tend to take more liberties with the arm since I want the main focus to be the face area. I have also laid in the eye and some of the background color for contrast. I still remain in the limited palette.
Now that the main figure's arm and face are complete I move on to the second portrait which is the severed head at the bottom. I keep these colors far more cool than in the first portrait. I also add more greens and yellows to the purple palette.
At this stage I have laid in the background as well as the rough tile work at the bottom left. I enjoyed the tile work very much due to the limited palette. Next I will address the robe and lighting issues.
Stay tuned!!!!
Update 3/12/2011 - I was finally able to take decent photo of the finished painting. I have found that the larger I work the more difficult it has become to take good photographs of the finished pieces. I guess I'll come out of this a photographer as well ;-)
In review I think the limited palette assisted me in staying on target. With larger pieces such as these it is very easy to get lost in portions of the painting which end up looking slightly off in the overall finished piece. I believe I will attempt this technique again with my next painting but with a more earthy color palette.
