Today painted the underpainting to 'All Things Bright And Beautiful'. Unusually, most of the underpainting is a grisaille, in grey, rather than tinting towards the final colours, although those areas where I wanted a stronger final colour were colourised:
I wanted something delicate, cyan-greys in the sky, flesh-greys for the monolith. There is a strong green imprimatura here too, which somewhat taints the underpainting, but it seems to look on track for the glazing.
I haven't painted in greys for some years. My second version of 'The Art Of Painting' (2008) was painted in grey in and yellow like this, that took me 6 8-hour days to paint, and this of a similar size (less complexity certainly) took 6 hours.
It was 24 to 26 degrees in my room as I painted, at the start of week forecast to break heat records. Hot and sunny days makes painting easier, but if it's too hot I can't open the windows, which is not good when working with solvents. It will probably be too hot then to paint tomorrow and for the rest of the week, which will be taken up with deliveries anyway, to Bunbury, collection from Nantwich Museum, and two performance days, on Wednesday and Thursday for the Good Vibrations and Ray Davies Tribute events.
