Mexican Plate

Better image posted below.

Last one, for now

More watercolor, overworked the hand dreadfully and still never got the drawing right. Tomorrow I start a new image; this girl is starting to sneer at me. I will probably come back to her; the experiments were useful but I didn't quite capture expression/emotion/drawing as I'd like to.

Here she is again, first two days

For once I took photos in progress--because I keep losing the good in early stages as well as covering the bad. I began with very loose, pale washes to give me an idea where the figure was, then established it with soft pencil and wet those marks to get sort of a shadow wash. The next morning I went in with more color. This sheet of paper was prepared with absorbent ground, which (contradictorily) made it less absorbent, made the color very easy to lift, but really grabbed the graphite. Another lesson.

Detail

WC/Acrylic on paper, 22" x 30"

This is the third (current) experiment on paper, the same French lady (probably from a postcard c. 1855). There was a watercolor beginning that got away from me so I covered almost all of it with thin acrylic. I also went in with soft graphite, to add some drawing marks, a technique I'll use earlier in the next one while the paper has some tooth. Whenever I feel too uncomfortable I slide back into familiar ways of painting--at least this time I used bigger brushes. More of Golden's fluid acrylics are on the way--after experimenting a bit with assorted hand-me-down paint, I decided the "fluid"s will work best on paper for me, liquid enough to easily thin to wc consistency with water or airbrush medium, but with enough body to remain opaque without hiding the texture of the paper. Which was 300 lb Fabriano, btw.

There's some glare in the upper left: shiny medium, which I need to avoid or learn to minimize.

Watercolor

In a continuing quest to improve my skills and make my brain more flexible, I'm trying some water media. Watercolor and acrylic on paper, 22"x 30", more or less.

Finally. Good Photos.

One might imagine these are the only two paintings I've ever made.

Gray Paint

The results of a project I've intended to do for a long time: mix and tube eight values of neutral gray, according (to the best of my old eyes, bad light, and less than ideal reference) to the Munsell scale. I have found the best way to neutralize color is with the same value of gray, as complements are hard for me to control and unpredictable. My palette usually contains a string of grays, but each session's string tended to vary by my patience or what I perceived the needs of the painting to be (and my perception often veered toward "less"). Finally I ordered empty tubes (from http://www.naturalpigments.com/, a wonderful resource for painters) and on Thursday started squeezing and mixing. I used several ends of whites, mostly flake with some titanium and zinc, and most of a new tube of Michael Harding Cremnitz white (lovely paint). A mountain of white to amalgamate. Then a much smaller pile of "black"--a mix of ivory, Williamsburg's Black Roman Earth, and some burnt umber to maintain the neutrality (black paint, especially ivory, tends toward blue). The stainless condiment cup in the photo holds about 60ml; the empty tubes were 50ml; so I had at least a general idea of how much to mix for one tube. I started with a small pile of value 5, to see how hard this was going to be and to check the hue of my black, and then used it to tint the lighter values. I worked from light to dark and fortunately had mixed enough (just enough) black and more than enough white. Kind of messy but very satisfying.

There was enough white to mix four values of raw umber as well.

The Nap One redux

I hope this one is finished; next week it goes to be photographed. The professional photographer will no doubt be able to get an image substantially closer to the real thing--and maybe give me some tips on improving my own photos of work.

The Nap One (WIP)

Might be finished. No title yet, oil on linen on board, 16" x 20."