Feeling inspired and joyous today. Have some ideas for Cromwell, but they can simmer for a while. Decided last night that it would be good to finish any paintings in progress this week, so I went to grab a painting this morning, and picked another instead, Home Life, which was so big and imposing and smoothly perfect in its underpainting that I'd been almost afraid of glazing it until now. That's always a good feeling. All good paintings should evoke that fear of touching it.
Here's the idea sketch, from 2016 or so I think.
For this, I simply scaled it up and painted it in. Here is the underpainting in progress, last summer.
I now tend to use a toned acrylic background, a change in my practice. I used to transfer a drawing, then apply an oil imprimatura; a similar toned wash, but the variety of surfaces and the consistency of the oil medium and rubbing away or losing the drawing made this less reliable than starting with a toned background. I'd never use a white background. There are three primary colours; three notes in a chord. Imprimatura, underpainting, glaze: let these be the three colours of chord for each atom of vibrancy in your painting!
The finished underpainting remained that way for a year and was glazed today, almost entirely in earth colours. I aim to use the most stable pigments and tend to avoid overly powerful or staining modern pigments (like phthalocyanines). Very strong pigments listed as stable might have their stability masked by their strength. Generally speaking I use ochres for everything and ultramarine or cobalts for blue. One exception is my beloved benzimidazolone red, Winsor and Newton Transparent Maroon, a real 'ultramarine of reds', blakc in body yet thins to an intense red. Many of the other modern reds make a sickly purply pink when mixed with white but this remains true. If I really need a bright intense red I'll use a pyrrole, but that's it. Cadmiums are lovely too, but there aren't many reasons to use these expensive pigments over pyrroles.
Here's a brief look at the finished painting, and a close up. The colours aren't true here, the white-balancing isn't natural.
Lots of tiny details there, something I could be lovingly trapped in for many hours, but I'm always aware of the clock. Good painting is efficient painting.
I paint better and with more endurance in silence, but often the same tune will play round and round in my head, so today I put some music on: Selling England by the Pound, then Foxtrot, by Genesis; The Dreaming by Kate Bush; and A Curious Feeling by Tony Banks.
