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June 9th, 2003
09:11 am - Quick Question ...
I want to start a verdaccio of a hand, and I figured I'd use a pose I've already drawn, but I can't decide which would make a better painting. I'm deciding between the fist drawing from a few days ago, and the thumbs-up drawing from the day after the fist. Which do YOU think would make a better painting (note that I'm not asking which one is the better drawing ... either one will look different once I take it to oils). Help me choose! Either one will still end up looking like a study more than a painting in its own right, but I still can't decide.
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11:14 pm - Day 13
Thanks for the feedback on the painting - I went with the fist (PA's comments especially made me choose it over the thumbs up) and started painting tonight. I worked from 7:30 to about 11:00, but not all of that time was spent actually painting. First, it takes more to get ready to begin painting. Second, tonight went like a comedy routine because this was the first time I've painted since we moved, so I had to find a lot of supplies before I could really start. Here's how the time went ...
Find masonite panel and remove wrapping. Sit down with it to transfer design.
Stand up to find transfer paper (in a box in the closet). Sit back down to transfer design.
Stand up to find tape, to tape original in place. Sit back down and finally transfer the design.
Stand up to move everything over to the easel. Pause to go out to kitchen and make a cup of tea. Return to studio while tea is brewing.
Find brushes, put them all in brush can, knock can over. Pick brushes up off the floor, swearing quietly. Find paint box, dig through paint box to find three necessary colors. Unable to find one of them, dump entire paint box out to hunt for it. Colors finally found, sit down to start painting.
Stand up to find painting apron. Put on apron, sit back down to paint.
Stand up to find Turpenoid. Turpenoid found and poured into brush cup, sit back down to paint.
Finally begin to paint. Spend 20 minutes painting Munsell scale for a verdaccio painting onto palette:
Discover brush washing tank is low on solvent. Stand up to find refill, fill tank, sit back down to paint.
Paint background value and begin laying in values for wrist. Laugh at the resemblance to a paint-by-number painting, and take a photo for the shits 'n giggles of it:
Stand up to put a new tape in the player. Sit back down and finally get some decent painting done, blending the paint-by-number into something that begins to look like a wrist:
Stand up to wash brushes in kitchen sink. Discover cup of tea, now stone cold. :P
Anyway, I made decent progress I think, despite all the up and down. Some comments about this whole project ...
Verdaccio is a style of painting in which you use grey-green tones (I used Oxide of Chromium and Ivory Black in equal parts, with Titanium White added to create the full value scale) to do a monochromatic underpainting. This allows you to thoroughly establish the value contrast throughout the painting, and creates a map for you when it comes time to add color. It's supposed to be especially useful for painting flesh tones, because you leave the green underpainting to show through in some places and it adds a certain realism to the skin (ever looked at the color of your skin? there's an amazing amount of blue and green in it, especially wherever the shadows are). I've never painted skin before, though, so it may turn out to be a huge disaster, heh.
I think I love this masonite. It's SO smooth, it's marvelous. But the smoothness does tend to make every single brushstroke show up, if you're not careful about blending. I'm using sables, so that helps with the smooth blending. Up until now, I've always used bristles on canvas, so going to sables is a bit weird. They are very small, and they don't move the paint around the same way at ALL. I used Liquin as a medium, which will greatly accelerate drying, so I ought to be able to keep working on this without having to wait too much for drying time.
Okay, enough rambles. It's bedtime.
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