Newbury Street

Here’s a recent painting; I thought I might provide some detail on how it was made.

This is “Newbury Street,” oil on panel, 20 × 20”. Many artists shy away from the square picture format, because it can be hard to achieve a dynamic composition within such a stable frame. I worked on overcoming that within a simple “bullseye” composition with a bit of tension between the jacket and its shadow. I think I succeeded fairly well with that.

The panel, which I had primed with lead white, had been curing for more than six months. Different sources suggest different amounts of time to let an oil ground cure; anywhere from a couple of weeks to several months. I can say that this well-cured surface was excellent to work on.

Click on a thumbnail to see the full-sized image.

I started with an underpainting using a mixture of raw umber mixed with a small amount of Studio Products Tuscan red (a bright iron oxide pigment). Unusually for me, I used the wipeout technique for the underpainting. I did that by smearing on a bunch of thinned paint in any given area, then wiping it back. I used a mixture of mineral spirits and linseed oil, with a bit of turps. Then I used a bristle bright brush to wipe the paint back. A bright is good for this because the short bristles allow for easy scrubbing. The idea is to wipe the paint away, letting the white ground show through in the lights and letting the paint stay thick in the darks.

Normally, I avoid the wipe out technique because I don’t think that thinning paint down a lot is a good idea—it can generate a paint layer that is not properly bound in the oil vehicle. However, because the oil primed surface was smooth and not absorbent, I found that I only needed to thin the paint down just a bit in order to use the wipe out method effectively. It allowed me to easily get the structure of the painting down quickly and easily, and to correct errors easily using a rag dipped in thinner. Because there was some linseed oil in the thinner, the final result was a surface that was clearly well-bound, as I could not easily scratch it with a fingernail or rub any pigment off.

Once that was dry (within a day, due to the siccative properties of the raw umber), I painted in the background and shadow. That took a few days to dry. Then I applied a very thin layer of Studio Products glazing medium to the surface of the painting and began working my way over the painting, attempting to paint something close to the final effect in each area before moving on to the next. That took several painting sessions.

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