Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Ugly Duckling

I've titled this post (NOT the painting!) 'Ugly Duckling' because this painting will go through quite a transformation before it's completed. This is on a 36" x 24" canvas, which is large compared to what I have been working on lately. I am not fond of the feeling of a brush against acrylic ground, so I wanted to get this stage over with as quickly as possible and was impatient to get the canvas filled in with paint. Though I was fairly patient and accurate with the drawing stage (above) I wasn't so careful when it came time to add some color.

The above image is from the end of the first session. The previous picture was half way through. I used burnt umber to draw everything in and add some shading on the figure, and then set the background and mask with black. This will help me judge the values in the next step. You can also see where I used lines that follow the form of the stomach to help me place the navel, and if you look really carefully you can see that I divided the canvas into quarters before I began. I do that to ensure the figure is positioned correctly.

This blurry photo was taken a little ways through the second session. I started by filling in the reds of the headdress. Then, I redefined some of the shadows on the figure and used an earth red to mark both warm areas and planes that just begin to tilt away from the light source.

This was taken at the end of the second session. It was late, and at some point I became weary of getting accurate values and simply wanted to fill all that white space in. (In other words, this layer is totally inaccurate and barely more than a mess of colors!) However, I knew better than to take this approach late at night in such small, important areas like the hands and eyes. So I left them for another day, when I will be refreshed and diligent once again.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Getting to see the steps from blank canvas to, well, not blank canvas is very interesting!! :)

Tea, yes. Soon. This week not so good, next week not so good, but the week after that probably better. :)