Some woodwork on a new frame today, but in the afternoon I thought I'd do some painting. Why start new painting when there are half finished paintings ready to be completed? Thinking about that, I had six waiting a glaze layer, some for over a year.
I have a miniature portrait for an old work called 'Love is Dead' in progress; I was unhappy with the first version of it, so started work on a replacement a year ago. Today I decided to add a glazing layer. I normally paint one underpainting in opaque colours, then one glazing layer. This, I think, is optimal. Years or trying alternatives revealed very little quality difference between one glazing layer and many; in fact it's possible to destroy the smoothness of a painting with more layers, more doesn't always mean a finer, softer finish.
But more layers can have a few effects. Firstly, they can allow a deepening of shadow (if, by accident, you had foolishly not made your underpainting dark enough). They can add special effects, like glazing with a particularly beautiful but transparent hue, such as ultramarine violet, which is really only possible to use in a many layers (I've never managed to even do that with it, it's just too transparent, yet it is extremely beautiful. My best use of it was in combination with azo yellow to make a highly transparent and beautiful range of greys in a painting called The Time For Love Is Nearly Flown).
My miniature so far was evenly painted in a greyish/greenish/yellowish hue and needed a coloured glaze, so I've simply matched the colours on my palette with those of flesh. This was complicated by the fact that I'm painting from a black and white photo, so I needed a colour photo of another face to copy from. The key is simply to match tones; light glaze on the light colours, dark over dark. Once everything is shaded smoothly (by sort of rubbing the paint in with a very soft brush), details can be added.
The expert miniaturist, and one of the few true sfumato experts in the world, David Lawton, told me that he disliked painting hair. I can understand why because hair can't be layered easily. It demands definite lines, not gentle 'smoke'. The key here is to paint those lines, as finely as possible, with the most liquid medium, and the finest point. I use a half-rigger for this; a discovery made in the past year. For me, riggers are joyous and essential tools for fine details. I've yet to understand why sets of so-called 'miniature brushes' are short and stubby. Maybe I'll find out one day.
One thing about hairs and layers is that you must be aware that the hair might necessarily be painted on the last layer, but not always. Generally, the more detail on every layer, the better, but if you paint your eyelashes in the underpainting (assuming you had a magical super-liquid medium and a dry background, which you won't have) then you would have to repaint them, and at least as finely, during glazing over them.
I'll probably add another layer to this, to darken up the inky blackness of the background, and darken the hair. This is an exceptional work for me because I aimed to paint many layers, the subject is about care and attention and love; the level of work and love in the painting itself is part of the art, it's a painting about the obsessive love of painting, so this must be evident, and the painting of it must be obsessive.
This can dry now. If I can sleep well enough I might glaze something else tomorrow. Last night was too restless due to general excitement.
