Tuesday, September 21, 2010

MCK fall model2, Day 1 - The Wash


So here we are at the close of my first day of painting the new model. This was done using turpenoid as a medium. I guess they call this a "wash" and usually I would just do this in a sepia tone - sort of put in the darks etc with yellow ochre, black, and white. Last time, however, MCK said that she would try putting in the right colours even at this stage so I tried to do that. I felt good at the end of the whole session, and know how Im going to attack this tomorrow.

Again, getting the colours accurately will be my goal and then spreading them on, this time with no medium, straight paint to canvas (or 16 x 20 canvas panel I should say).

Her skin is tough for me to figure out because of the shadows but I am seeing colours that I never had. I got the darkest shadow area by mixing Alizarin Permanent, French Ultramarine, Flake White, and this time I added Veridian because I could actually see the greens in her skin! -- especially in the arm/shoulder area. I was trying to think in terms of warm/cool colours and (a) finding them in the subject and (b) applying ideas of them to this painting, but who knows how that will go. The lighter areas are a lot lighter, but it was starting to get muddyish so I stopped at this point.

Tomorrow the brush is going to get loaded up with paint, brush strokes may start to be seen. Its difficult to keep it going sometimes because I look around the studio and people are starting to pull together their masterpieces but hey, what can you do. I do see this as having at least as good an ending as mckfall1 model. If nothing else, it'll be my first figurative painting with the subject in the shadows.

No comments: