Sunday, January 26, 2014

Percy, life study, oil 18 x 14

Have I mentioned lately how much I love painting at the Mountain Artists' Guild Open Studios?

Dorothy Ray brought in another wonderful model, Percy, who is a portrait/figurative painter himself.

Here are the in-process step pics I took during the session.









Ignore the color notes on the lower left - I painted over a previous demo, having reconditioned the canvas with a fairly thick layer of Holbein's Foundation Greenish. While it covered the underlying paint, the surface was very slick, so that getting the paint, especially the first layer to stick was a challenge. And of course in a 3 hour session, nothing dries so I had to fight my 'direct' tendencies - light touch isn't something that comes naturally to me at the easel.

Percy was lit from the upper right with a color-corrected (probably 5500 K) artificial light, augmented by a very delicate natural blue light coming in from our left.

2 comments:

  1. Really, really nice. It looks like the slick surface made for some really interesting textures.

    BTW, just found you. Your portraits look great. I also have a weekly open studio that I try to get to on a regular basis. New to fine art painting but trying to learn.

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  2. Thanks for touching base, Chris! Working from life is the way to make the best and fastest prgress:)

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