This week the crypts went from this …
… to this:
Look, Toto, color! The only other colors are going to be touches of rust and a thin wash of brown on the cement. (And I overcorrected in the white scumbling in the cement so now that walking surface has to get a dark wash.) There is also some brick interest I am just … skipping.
It is almost impossible to take an accurate photo of this. It’s so big, and the phone keeps auto-straightening. I swear it’s much straighter than it seems.
The flowers went from this:
… to this:
It seems like the leaves are competing with the flowers now, but that’s what the book said to do. I think I got the leaf colors wrong. Here’s what’s in the book:
That’s done then. I think the next small one will be from the glazing book. The next big one might be from life, though.
6 responses to “Weekly Paint Progress: 8/20”
Both are gorgeous! I had no idea that the crypts would swap from “creepy thing to go on book cover about 1920s vampires” to “less creepy thing that could be a postcard for people who like fancy cemeteries” with a layer of color… but also, I somehow missed that the color glaze layer was intended.
Anyway, excellent work. (and yes, I can tell from the canvas edge on the lower photo of the crypts that it’s the photo that’s askew.)
KC – I do like the technique where you paint in black and white and then layer on color. But, that might be because I generally don’t make the values strong enough (compare the flowers as I did them to how they should have been).
That’s really interesting!
I like your leaves-in-the-jug more than their leaves-in-the-jug, but yes, I see what you mean. (your leaves-in-front feel like they’re painted onto a piece of glass in front of a jug of flowers, for some reason, but I am bewildered as to *why* they feel less in-depth/real/3D to me than the rest of the painting! I may just be going cross-eyed… or is it a lack of some shadow I’m implicitly expecting or something?)
But yes, getting the contrast right and then worrying about the colors seems like it might be at least fewer things at once – and thus more chance of being Bold and Confident and whatnot?
KC – The touches of light on the leaves aren’t accurate if you look at the light in the rest of the painting. I would go back and tone them down, but the thing’s already on the wall at my mother in law’s house. And yes, given that painting’s all a series of decisions, splitting the values from the hues makes for fewer decisions at the same time. For me anyway.
Once it’s on someone else’s wall, yes, probably too late. 🙂 Not a bad thing, sometimes, though, to have an enforced stop. 🙂
Fewer decisions at a time – as long as that does not exclude the only good options – are a good thing! Brain tired. (I did a stint of refactoring code this morning. Everything’s working again, but man, that turns brain into pudding…)
KC – the pace is what shuts my brain off. Even easy things, done rapid fire, wear me out.