Watch a painting grow
Wednesday, May 10th, 2006
While working on my most recent painting of Lucy, I got the idea to take pictures of it in various stages of progress. I’ll admit that my method of working is not particularly complex, simply because my style of painting is not particularly complex. Three-quarters of the time I spend on a painting, I’m just readjusting the “geography” of the painting, adding more layers of paint for opacity, making edges harder, etc. But what the heck. I took the pictures, so I might as well post them. So, step one: cover the canvas with off-white gesso. It seems to help the colors go on more opaque, meaning I have fewer layers to paint. Always a bonus.
Next, I take my big line drawing, done on newsprint, and transfer it onto the cavas. I do this by rubbing the back of the newsprint drawing with charcoal, then taping the newsprint to the canvas and tracing back over my lines. This works better than trying to do the drawing directly onto the canvas, since it’s hard to erase thoroughly on canvas. Almost any painting I do starts out with a photograph I’ve taken. I draw a grid over the photo, then use the grid to make an approximately 8×10 line drawing. Then I use a bigger grid to make the first drawing into the full-size one I transfer onto the canvas. It adds an extra step, but I feel like it helps me to get a more accurate drawing, so it’s worth it.
Now I start painting. I generally add the colors in no particular order, although I usually do the bigger areas first. I use colors straight out of the tube whenever I can, because mixing is a pain. That said, this background was a mixture of (I think) brilliant green, cadmium yellow, and perhaps a bit of white, but probably not.
This is where the painting starts to look “done” even though I actually have a fair amount of work left. All the major colors are down, so it’s just a matter of adding highlights and shadows for form, redoing shapes (in this case, I made a lot of changes on the left side of her face), and correcting mistakes, smudges, etc. When I finally feel it’s finished, I sign it and then paint the edges so that it can hang with or without a frame. I almost always sign in black; the color I choose for the edges de
pends on the painting. If it has a lot of background color and a fairly simple color scheme, as this one does, I usually use the background color. Otherwise, I use black.
The finished product! This is still not the best photograph; I tried it again minus the late afternoon sun, but now it’s underexposed. I think that’s a little better than a glare, but it’s still not perfect. The other step-by-step photos actually offer a fairly accurate idea of the colors, so I’m not going to spend too much time worrying about it. On the whole, I’m rather pleased with this one, although Red Lucy is still my favorite. I’m envisioning a series now, with two more to follow–one with a yellow background and one with bright blue. We’ll see. I love photographing and painting Lucy. She’s fast becoming my “muse” although I should probably try to branch out some, eh? (”Green Lucy” acrylic, 20×24″)
