SPRING SEMESTER 2011 Week 3

So the painting part of my week has kicked in solid this week. I finally got to start in on my big painting after a lot of technical issues. And I continue to play with painting with Rustoleum on cardboard. In fact today I purchased a few more colors , a blue and yellow which will give me a full palette. I really look forward to trying these new colors out and seeing what the results will be. The painting above was done to see how the paint would handle trying for a more subtle approach and I really had a blast doing this. because the enamel is shiny it adds a luster to the skin tones especially if you start lighter and then paint over the lighter color and let some of it come through. I am also getting a better handle on the paint and its properties and drying time. It sets up quick, which can be good and also tricky. So I decided top do another in my Super Sad series. The most fun was the hair!
So I finally got the big painting rocking--it seemed like it would take forever to get it going, I wanted to over the break but I was just too swamped with commercial work. So i rented a projector from the school library and hooked my laptop up to it and spent a while trying to get the image as square and as in-focus as I could.
Then I roughed the painting in with a wash of Van Dyke Brown and using a strangle and straight edge I went in and fixed all the wonky distortions and fixed the perspective.
I fired right in and got the whole thing coverd in one day, so all of this was done from late afternoon once the sun was low enough not to wash out the projector till about midnight when I called it quits, and man, my feet were tired after dancing around while slapping the paint on this baby!

The big goal is to make the larger painting just as vital and fresh as the study, which means I have to keep it loose and full of energy and get back from it as I paint to see how the painting reads. I expect this will be another week to maybe 10 days to finish this up--but who knows...the painting will tell me when I'm done.

This was another Rustolem on cardboard and done in my morning painting class with Mike Gallagher. This is a once session painting and I really felt the juices rolling this morning. Since this pose goes for a few more weeks I'll try a few more compositions from this set-up.