Sunday, May 16, 2010

a glimpse into process



By popular request, I will talk about process here for a while, rather than going on little diatribes about how frustrating non-productive times are for me, etc.

So here goes. This piece was produced about 1 1/2 years ago. It's on a cradled panel, and comprised mainly of five colours, three mediums,(all Tri-Art, goes without saying, but I thought I'd say it anyway) and graphite (wide stick, 4B).

Tools of choice:
  1. 3" flat colour shaper.
  2. 2" angled flat white taklon brushes
  3. long (9") off-set handled palette knife
Colours: Payne's Grey, prussian blue, zinc white, warm white. There could also be some titanium white in there, who remembers.

Mediums: Dry media ground, gloss & matte polymer mediums, gloss gel.

Dry media: graphite, compressed charcoal

The warm buff tone is the wood of the panel showing through. This piece is a build up of thin transparent glazes, it took several days to produce. The raised textural areas (created either by extruding gel, or manipulating it with tools) were accentuated by dragging the graphite stick sideways in smooth repetitive motions. In real life, those edges gleam, love graphite for that.

Some of the darks were achieved by dragging the loose charcoal dust around with my mediums. There are matte and glossy areas on the painting (top = matte, bottom = gloss).

It is an unintentional landscape. I don't generally paint landscapes, although I do like horizon lines. This is contradictory, I know. Still not sure if I truly love the piece, but it calms me...I just wish it was bigger, a lot bigger. (it's about 16" x 20")

3 comments:

  1. I have to say, I love the phrase "unintentional landscape."

    ReplyDelete
  2. I calls em as I sees em.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Having seen this piece up close, it is one of the most complex yet, simple pieces I have seen in a long time. I loved how you rubbed some graphite on the gel medium and added yet another layer of depth.

    I've recently fallen in love with the opacifying medium that Tri-art makes. Wow, what a neat product - no more huge colour shifts when mixing and now I have a much wider world of colour to use.

    ReplyDelete