Glass and Folds

Continuous tones are fascinating and challenging! My thought is not to overthink the image but to simply record the tones. What interests me about this painting is the technique of handling tone variations with acrylics. I think this exercise takes me to two simultaneous paths--studying continuous tone with graphite, and practicing the mixing of tones in acrylic.

Glass Restart

Tonight was a total restart on this painting with a new foundation and glazes. I used a printout with white colored pencil for a transfer and began the piece with shades of gray. Not only is glass new to me but the cloth with folds is another interesting challenge.

Rough Glass

Here's a first cut at the glass. I experimented with various glazes to build a background with depth and then botched it when I mistakenly used mars black for jenkins green. Oops! I can always build it up with semi-opaque layers and then transparent.

What's different this time is that I apply an entire background and then go back for subjects. It's thought that a feeling of depth is easier to come by if one doesn't need to deal so much with borders. I suppose with backgrounds have a lot going on that that would be the case.

For those who read posts via email subscription or Facebook, it's a really great read to take in yesterday's comments. They are smart, sensitive, and fun. Check 'em out at http://nuncketest.blogspot.com/2011/03/call-me-fickle.html!

Call me fickle...

but I am off with a new image. I would like to get back to the English Ivy, and the Magnolia, and tighten them up, perhaps frame them...

But for now, I'd like to explore glass in my cardboard light box. Timothy slept through the shoot, vastly simplifying my work. This is my very favorite brush holder; it's not tipped over even once.

Just a bit more this evening...

This darned cold has kept me out of work and pretty much away from painting so tonight was all about little bits of housekeeping. The beauty of acrylic is the ease of making corrections. A little bit of sharply applied dark blue gets me out of all kinds of trouble! The same goes for that wonderfully opaque titanium white. Also went in with with blue washes on the branch, looking for those lost edges.

Magnolia poco a poco

Here I pushed the background into a midnight blue and added more color to the petals. Rather than mix colors, I'm laying cerulean blue washes over the magenta to pull the color towards purple.

Magnolia With a Bit of Color

I refined the grays a bit and then applied some light washes just to get things started.

Spring in Bridgewater was heralded in with light snow most of the day!

Magnolia Starter

I thought I'd try the magnolia in similar fashion as the English Ivy. I'll probably take another evening to work out the grisaille more smoothly before applying color washes. Also thinking this might be interesting to attempt on black paper with gouache, which I've never tried.

English Ivy Acrylic II

I've been learning a lot with this piece...

Emphasizing a light source means that everywhere that light falls must be consistent.

Heavy strokes are okay only if well controlled. I got into trouble with dark stripes that needed a good deal of attention to correct.

Acrylic washes are very cool, reminding me of egg tempera.

And, every stroke counts.

English Ivy Acrylic

This evening I reinforced the grays and then began applying washes. I like washing with my sables, but they're my lovely W&N's. I need to pick up a handful of synthetics and save the good ones for watercolor.

Acrylic Attempts

Here I painted in each area separately, trying to take in shading while not paying a lot of attention to proper coloring.

In this second attempt, I first placed over the entire panel layers jenkins green followed by layers of quinacridone burnt orange . Then came the foreground with a mix of titanium white and mars black in grisaille fashion. I'd like to refine fore and back ground before laying color over the grays.

Retry of Last Night's Image

A cardboard box with a small cutout covered with parchment paper gave me more control than last night's image.

Continuing with thoughts of Old Master's properties, here are a couple of links to articles by Koo Schadler:

http://www.artistsnetwork.com/article/secrets-old-masters/

http://www.artistsnetwork.com/article/one-source-lighting/

What I am seeing from this is that by design she is referring in good part to lighting.

Experiment With Light

Tomorrow I drop off the painting, and a week later I visit it. So, it feels like that endeavor is now behind me. I've long been attracted to dramatic lighting of the kind attributed to the "Old Masters" style. Now, I know just about nothing on this subject and will probably jitter about as I find my way, but I'll still try to learn a bit here.

This change of tack also satisfies my need to get up to speed with acrylic for my upcoming workshop with Koo Schadler, "Old Master Design Workshop", which uses acrylics. I'll also want to get back to egg tempera for the second workshop.

So, that's the general plan for the near future, if I can hold my focus. No small feat over here! ;-)

Firstly, I thought I'd experiment with some lighting and layout. Although a dedicated mini studio is probably in order, this example was just an underexposed quickie. Still, it's rather good for stimulating further ideas.