A busy two days underpainting When This Is All Over. I started with a burnt sienna ground, a tint with a tiny bit of acrylic colour applied with a sponge. I find this to be more even and more reliable than an oil imprimatura. Then, the underdrawing, then painting:
I used only four colours for this first stage; black, white, yellow ochre, raw umber. Perhaps a warmness from a more red-based colour (red umber?) might have helped but this can be added in later layers. The skull is taken from a vanitas by Pieter Claesz. I had to mirror it because my light comes from the right. The bones are improvised.
I was reminded that one art of painting is improvising or knowing textures and lighting rather than merely copying, because the level of detail possible to paint is always greater than that visible. Here I'm copying from an imperfect Pieter Claesz image, but his original is, of course, an abstraction of reality.
Today I painted the hand, adding light red to the palette:
There is even less detail here. My hand is full of tiny lines and marks that are joyous to paint; if only I could hold out my hand AND paint with at the same time. I was reminded of the painter Steve Caldwell, an organic photocopier; who paints photorealistic paintings, exact reproductions of photographs so detailed that a machine could do them. At that level, the skill is not the painting but in taking a photograph of sufficient clarity and resolution, which is hardly being an artist.
The bird came last, with some nickel yellow and cobalt turquoise. A real blue tit is more red-shaded blue, which can go into the glaze layer. Its colours here are brighter than the others. This fits its character as the essence of life, freedom, vitality, but things will tone down a little in glazing.
This underpainting is detailed and part of me becomes afraid at this point, afraid of a new layer which might spoil or destroy some of the detail or beauty of the underpainting, but I remind myself that this is the ideal feeling. A glaze almost always, very almost always improves a painting, and the more detailed an underpainting the better. Even the tiniest marks shine through to show yet more detail above. Over many layers, the effect is one of smoothing and softening, but this can cover detail, for my technique, the optimum is one glaze layer over one underpainting and an imprimatura; all three layers shine like a chord in music.
In other news I've been practising piano. Deb and I, as Fall in Green, are going to open Knutsford Music Festival this year on August 12th. I will at least play Clown Face and Jabberwocky.
