Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The Elements

I've had a busy few days working on the underpainting to a small picture called The Elements. It's a figure for the most part and I've made the face a bit too light compared to the other parts.

I use a white wall tile as my palette. It's smooth and non absorbent, and often coloured with titanium white pigment itself so an ideal background. I tend to mix a new batch of paint each morning, to keep it fresh and liquid.

One thing I've began to do with this painting is to store any important colours from the previous day on smaller tiles. I've bought a small stock of white tiles about the size of post-it notes to keep puddles of colour.

The surface holds pencil well but cleans perfectly too. I've used paper in the past for this, but colour matching is hard when the oil is sucked out from the paints, and often these are wet enough to test dabs or actually paint with.

I've been busy with other art things too, even some music on Monday, but more on everything later. I should finish The Elements underpainting tomorrow. The last stage involves painting an arm made of water...