Work-in-progress Gourdes

Well, it has been a busy past couple of weeks. We had our grand opening at Montage gallery/studio on Mill, which was a huge success. I talked to tons of people, passed out a lot of business cards, and sold 3 paintings.

The Sedona painting is nearly done. I've been working on it at the gallery while I talk to people. People enjoy watching artists work, and having my easel set up in the gallery has brought in more traffic. Since the painting is at the gallery it means I can't take a picture of it right now. D'oh. I'll have to take an update picture during the week.

I've been working on a little side project. I got the itch to do a very refined painting on a panel. I also decided to take some progress photos of everything, from sketch to completion. The panel is a 5x7 pre-primed Masonite panel from Gessobord. I was pretty impressed with the quality, though they can be a little pricey.

After making some thumbnail sketches and deciding on my final composition, I started working on the panel. I began with a charcoal pencil sketch of the subject (in this case, Gourdes. Gourdes were on sale at the grocery store around Halloween, so I bought some and took a bunch of pictures).

The Photo:

The winning thumbnail sketch:

The Charcoal line drawing on the panel:

Finally its time to start painting! I decided I will be using only Old Holland paints for this. The underpainting was done with Flake White and Burnt Umber.

Because I used Flake White (a quick drying pigment) and thin layers, this was dry the next day. Ready for the first layers of opaque color. My palette here (Old Holland, again) is Flake White, Naples Yellow Deep, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red Medium, Red Ochre, Green Earth, Cobalt Blue, Burnt Umber, Ivory Black.

I took the picture indoors (it is dark outside right now) so there is a bit of a glare from my studio lamps.

Now the painting is awaiting glazes. Can't wait to get started on that.

12/19 Well I did some glazing last night, and a little more work with opaque paint. I figured I would just edit this post rather than make another one, and keep all the progress photos in one place. Stuff is really starting to take shape now.

Glazing unfortunately makes the painting glossy, and that makes it difficult to photograph. However since I am using only Liquin as my medium it means the painting dries practically overnight. I might be able to paint another glaze layer on tonight.

12/20 Next glaze layer:

Things are looking better. I still need to deepen a lot of the shadows, especially the close gourde. I might be able to get that done in 1 or two more glaze layers. For glazing I used my transparent paints from Old Holland. Old Holland paints are rather expensive, but I am slowly building up my stock of colors. I used Liquin as a glazing medium, and a little bit of Flake White for the areas where I needed to bring up highlights. The rest of the colors were Indian Yellow (orange), Cobalt Yellow, Ruby Lake, Green Earth, Viridian Light, Ultramarine Blue Deep, Ivory Black.

Well I think it's finally finished. I applied another glaze layer last night,with the same palette of transparent colors listed above, with the addition of Permanent Alizarin Crimson (I don't have an Old Holland version of this color so I had to use Winsor&Newton). There's some slight color changes I might make in the next day or two but I think that's probably all the adjustments that need to be made.

 On to the next one!