Painting Marathon Part 4

I only did one design today which yielded only 8 paintings. Since I had an easy day I decided to photo document the painting process.

The first pic is me painting the pictures. You can see the paper supports taped on Masonite boards so they stretch as they dry. When I complete a set of paintings I lay them out in the sun to fully dry. In the heat of the day they really dry well.















With the first step of the painting process for this design (I use different painting approaches depending on the design) I chose to start with an underpainting of cadmium red. The idea is to allow some of the underpainting to show in the final step, sort of like a work of Wayne Thiebaud.

In the next step I worked the background sky. Yes, I know the sky isn't typically yellow, but I like the effect that arbitrary color has in a painting, and I don't usually like to paint just blue for my skies.

Next, I painted the fence with white. If you look closely, you can see some of the red showing through which gives form to the shapes.

In this step I added hookers green to the base of the fence and tree.

Then I added yellow to the green and put it in the foreground.

Then I blended the two greens together. I looks a little rough here but in the final it looks more gradual.

In this step I realized that I forgot to put bushes at the base of the tree. That's what I get for not looking close to my sketch. But no problem. I just added a little white to my red to make it opaque and added it to the picture.

This step looks a bit grody, but necessary to add dark value to the greenery. I loosely mixed red to my green to darken it.

To finish the green areas I used a combination of hookers green with and without cad yellow. I worked light to dark, starting at the top of the tree.

Finally, I used burnt umber for the tree trunk and for a slight line at the base of the fence and tree, just to give it a little accent.

And here is the final painting untaped.

Today was my final day for painting. Since the selling of the art will coincide with our yard sell, I need to also get ready for that. I only have so much time.

The painting marathon was a good personal experience. It was a good exercise in discipline, technique, and simply trying something different. I think artists need to challenge themselves every now and then because it is easy to get used to doing things the same way every time. With this exercise, it allowed me to get a small glimpse into what it might be like to work as Steve Keene does. I have total respect for him.