Friday, May 7, 2010

Golden Roses Done, and a next subject ?

Yeay ! This afternoon, after getting a lot of work done, I had a few good afternoon light hours to work on the golden roses. I needed good light for it, for detailed work with colours and also some of the edges. And I pulled out the Cadmium Yellow Medium too. This hue is a rather expensive pigment and usually behaves like what I call a "bossy" yellow. Without taking a lot of care, it can really dominate things it is mixed with. But today it was, well, golden ! It mixed and socialised so nicely with Naples Yellow and Titanium White, and for warmer shadows it looks lovely mixed half and half with Transparent Perinone Orange. As I may have mentioned in previous posts, working with yellows is not simple, and the various shadows on this painting have been a challenge. Some are orangey and some are dark yellow. A few have a grey cast to them, they have been very difficult indeed, because get them wrong and you "ruin" your beautiful yellow. So, I am kind of glad I kept the Cad Yellow for this last painting session when I was was working very carefully, with a pretty light and sure hand (and eye !).

After finishing this, I put a layer of gloss medium over the whole painting, just to liven up the finish. I worked today with paints on bit the dryer side (so not mixed with medium, or much water). As I work on a painting in acrylics, this is the pattern: very soupy paint plus medium for underpaintings, and each successive session is a bit more structured and careful with paint mixture, mixing, and so forth. I have perched the painting in the lounge room, so I can admire it this evening. It is signed in a mid green, over a greens part of the bottom right corner. This will be glazed tomorrow and on this one I will be working highlights into the glaze with oil paints (it will get an oil based glaze).

Winston and Pookie are pretty satisfied with today's studio work. So is Maggie, but she was not willing to be photographed, staying behind the scenes !

Here is a possible next subject. A still life. Verdigris rabbit (a new verdigris statue acquisition). But that silly pink ribbon has gotta go !

((sorry for funny text formatting....having formating problems today with Blogger... it seems if you select the first block of text, it shows you the first picture bigger, but selecting that photo does not. possibly this is operator error--maybe tomorrow will be a better day for that !))

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