Five Color Palette

Second sitting demo for fig/portrait class with Martin.

Sittings 6 & 7

The Perfect Medium (for me)

What medium did Rubens use? We will never know. After trying every medium I could, except for copal, I always return to Maroger. However I could never reconcile the fact that black oil was too dark to use for the higher keys in my palette. I could use a lighter drying oil like walnut or safflower (as most whites are composed of) but they were too unpleasant to use for the general palette.

I began washing flaxseed oil and sun-bleaching it until it was water clear. The color seemed to be better in the lighter hues and the whites looked very bright. I could grind my whole palette now with one oil, but it was missing that black oil special feeling and it took much longer to dry.

I then thought to cook the water clear oil with litharge similar to making black oil. I bounced the heat for at least 5 hours and the oil only got slightly darker but still much lighter than cold-pressed linseed oil. After letting the cooked oil sit for a couple of days I tried to make some Maroger. It got stiff but didn't completely gel. I put some in a jar and to my surprise a week later it became thixotropic! The resulting medium is a very light similar to Liquin or other neo-megilps but much more transparent. Now I can gring my paint and make my medium with the same, stable drying oil.

Pictured Above: Traditional Black Oil, New Oil, Washed and Bleached uncooked oil (Water Clear), New Medium, Maroger.

Fifth Sitting

I've continued to correct the drawing with opaque paint. I'm also trying to work out the main chromatic relationship with the figure to the blue drape.

Seated Figure

This was a rapid conte crayon drawing covered with shellac, 2 sittings. Changes to the pose were made with thin oil paint, mainly the head position.

Tuscan Landscapes

Platform

This is a small painting that is up at the NYAA Alumni show "The Ones" for a few weeks.

Under Light

We had a five week pose in which the model was lit from below. All the shadow shapes were reversed and so the students had to record these shapes and trust that they would come together and make form. Another challenge was the half lit area. Students had to work with subtle modulations rather than obvious contrast.

Today I continued to weave tiles in the light mass and fine tune the drawing.

Painting Fire

Fire, like any of the elements, is challenging to show its presence and its effect on other objects. These are some sketches where I've experimented the color, value, and edge of fire.

Blocking in the Gray

Today I was on the second sitting of a figure painting and I focused on the subtle temperature changes. There aren't many extreme value jumps, rather an infinite number of prismatic grays that indicate the transitions in form.