I thought I would record progress on a new oil painting as I go along for you good people. To get the subject I set up a still-life in the studio and took photographs. Actually several different set-ups. I then transferred photos to my laptop. I chose what I thought would make a good painting and did some editing in Pixelmator on light levels, cropping, colours etc. I won't show the photo just yet as this would spoil the surprise. I then printed out at the size I wanted (to fit on a 8x10" canvas board).
To transfer to the canvas I traced main shapes from the printout on tracing paper. I covered the back of the tracing paper with compressed charcoal and retraced over the front to leave faint charcoal lines on the canvas. I then painted an underpainting using Acrylic paint. This is really quick and dries almost instantly. It is fine to paint oils over Acrylic and is basically a shortcut. This also means that I have a coloured ground to work on rather than the white canvas. See Figure- Step 1.
Step 1 - Acrylic underpainting
I used a leaf green/yellow/white mix for the lemons (you guessed!) and a grey (black/white mixes!) for everything else. I then added white highlights to the lemons. I plan to glaze over the lemons using transparent oils, so the underpainting needs to be high key (light), as glazing can only darken. Already the painting is taking shape and it would be easy to make big changes (or scrap altogether) at this stage without too much heartache. A trick is to look at the painting from afar. If it already looks good then the general composition and lights/darks are working and you could be on to a winner. I'm happy enough with it. There is sufficient border to take a frame rebate without squeezing the main subject (which is often overlooked when you first start painting). This underpainting could be worked on straight away, but I'm taking a break.
No comments:
Post a Comment