David's work

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Grisaille work in progress

15 February 2010 in David's work, demo/in progress, oil painting by David | 3 comments

Sorry about the very long delay since the last post. That’s for two reasons:

I’ve been very busy with work, helping to raise a three year old, andÂ taking an online graduate course.
I’ve been finishing up the large commission I started over the summer, and I have allowed that to kind of block my ability to do other painting. That’s just about done, however, so it’s time to move on.

I had a whole day off today, so I took the opportunity to start a new painting.

This is “Layover.” It’s 20 × 20”, oil on linen primed with lead white, toned with red earth and raw umber. This is a monochromatic underpainting—a grisaille—which will be glazed over once it’s dry. I used various mixtures of Doak’s flake 1c and Natural Pigments black earth (an iron oxide black).

The key is a little too dark for optimal glazing (since glazes tends to darken what they cover). That means I’ll need to paint into the glaze with white to get the lights up.

I’ll keep you posted on this, and I’ll try not to let such a long time pass before putting up other stuff. Unfortunately, posting will probably be intermittent for the foreseeable future.

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Tags: grisaille, oil painting, underpainting, work in progress

In progress

10 November 2009 in David's work, art business, oil painting, painting by David | 1 comment

Here’s a picture of what I’m working on. It’s oil on canvas, a little over five feet tall, so it stretches the limits of what I can put on my tripod easel. The picture is pretty awful, because it’s hard to photograph an oil painting this size without a lot of glare.

New Jeans This is a commissioned piece. The customer wants a painting of this pair of jeans (supplied by him) against a black background. We went back and forth on the composition, eventually settling on making it look as if they were being worn by an invisible person. That entailed hiring a model to wear the jeans as I paint, since I’m pretty bad at working from photos.

As you can see, I’m working my way down. I mixed and tubed a base color and applied that as an initial dead coloring layer. I am working on top of that. Right now, the jeans are hung in midair so that I can paint the inside parts. The customer wanted to capture the iconic nature of Levis 501’s, so the inside tags—especially the one that will have a bright red 501 on it—are important.

I’ll try to post better pictures later on.

I like how it’s coming at the moment. In some ways this is an interesting and exciting project, and in others it will be really good to get this done, as it also represents a block on my other work.

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Tags: commission, David's work, New Jeans

Jeans study

16 August 2009 in David's work, drawing by David | No comments

Study for a commission I’m preparing for. Graphite on paper.

Jeans study

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Tags: David's work, drawing

Gift Shell

6 July 2009 in David's work by David | 1 comment

Oil on panel, 10 × 12”.

This one has kind of a story to it. For the last 50 or so years, my wife’s family (on her mother’s side) has used this conch shell as a joke gift. It’s been passed back and forth many times. The real gift is hidden in the shell, or the shell is included as a part of the gift. Big laffs. Right now the shell is in my wife’s possession, but who knows how long that will last?

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Figure drawing

25 April 2009 in David's work, drawing by David | 2 comments

I’ve found a local atelier that does figure drawing in two and a half hour poses. When I moved to this area, I attended a few sessions at another group that does the more typical 5, 10, and 15 minute gesture poses. Those just drive me crazy. Even one session seems like only enough time to get started.

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Tags: David's work, drawing, the figure

Red Laces

24 April 2009 in David's work, oil painting by David | 1 comment

I struggled quite a bit with this one. That’s largely because of the very strong value contrasts, the large areas of subtle darks, and because it’s not easy getting the right chroma in that hue of red in the lights. The painting looks good in fairly bright light, but flattens out in dimmer light.

“Red Laces,” oil on canvas, 11 × 14”.

Red Laces

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“The Other Woman” Final

19 January 2009 in David's work, oil painting by David | No comments

This is done. I changed the name from “Two Dresses” to “The Other Woman.” It just seemed to need a more evocative title. Oil on panel, 24 × 18”.

"The Other Woman," oil on panel, 24 x 18"

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White Shirt Final

15 December 2008 in David's work by David | 1 comment

This one is done. “White Shirt,” oil on panel, 20 × 16”.

white-shirt-2

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New Gallery

25 November 2008 in David's work, personal by David | No comments

I now have a new gallery, independent of this blog, to display my work. It’s not entirely finished, but close enough to check out. Please let me know what you think—especially if there’s anything there that’s confusing, ugly, or could be improved in any way. If it displays poorly in your browser, please drop me an email.

I made it myself, using my mad coding skillz, such as they are. In case you’re interested in geeky stuff, it’s running on the Joomla content management system, using the Hivemind template from Rockettheme.com and the excellent Phoca gallery extenstion.

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Tags: David's work, Joomla

Figure study

25 October 2008 in David's work by David | No comments

Another one from a couple of years ago. This is one three hour session from life, in art class. Oil on toned canvas. Obviously unfinished; I think the model couldn’t make the next several sessions, so another model was booked.

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Tags: David's work, the figure

Vision of a Knight

24 October 2008 in David's work, art history, artists, oil painting, painting, tempera by David | No comments

I did this a couple of years ago. It’s a copy of a small panel painting by Raphael (6.7 × 6.7 inches) at the original size. Wikipedia says this about it (the original, of course):

The Vision of a Knight or The Dream of Scipio or Allegory is a small egg tempera painting on poplar by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael, finished in 1504. It is in the National Gallery in London. It probably formed a pair with the Three Graces panel, also 17 cm square, now in the Chateau de Chantilly museum.

The theme is controversial. Some authorities intend the sleeping knight to represent the Roman general Scipio Africanus (236-184 BC) who was dreaming to choose between Virtue (behind whom is a steep and rocky path) and Pleasure (in looser robes). However, the two feminine figures are not presented as contestants. They may represent the ideal attributes of the knight: the book, sword and flower which they hold suggest the ideals of scholar, soldier and lover which a knight should combine.

I did it in egg tempera with oil glazes. More recent analysis by the National Gallery indicates that the original was actually an oil painting. Although it is by no means a perfect copy, I am mostly satisfied, as I think I managed to capture some portion of the sweetness of Raphael’s early work.

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Tags: egg tempera, oil painting, Old Master copies, old masters, Raphael, Renaissance paintings

Oil priming a panel

12 October 2008 in David's work, art materials, artists, oil painting by David | 2 comments

After doing some priming this evening, I thought it might be helpful to describe how I do it. My method is based on Rob Howard’s recommendations for using the primer from Studio Products. I’m using their white lead/black oil primer, now discontinued. The approach should work for any oil primer, such as the newer SP titanium black oil primer, or the lead white oil primers from Williamsburg or Doak.

This needs to be done in a well-ventilated room.
Cut the panel to size. Sand the edges down so that they are smooth and slightly rounded (chamfered).
Clean the surface of the panel thoroughly with denatured alcohol. Give it a few minutes to evaporate away.
Apply a layer of primer with a knife. I use a plastic palette knife. You can also use one of those wide plastic house painting knives, but I find the sharp corners leave grooves. You could also use a brush, but it would be slow work. If the primer is too thick to spread easily, you can thin it slightly with solvent. Apply the primer quite thinly.
Take a soft fan brush and wet it with solvent. Lightly feather it over the primed surface, smoothing out all of the bumps and grooves. When the brush picks up primer, wipe it with a cloth, wet it again, and continue until you’ve smoothed the entire surface.
Let the panel dry leaning face-in against a wall. This will help keep dust from falling on it. Allow about 4-5 days to dry.
Repeat with a second layer.
Allow at least a month, preferably several months, to cure. It’s best to do several panels at a time, several times a year, so that you always have a couple of panels in preferred sizes ready to go.

Oil primed surfaces are very pleasant to work on, although it takes time to get used to how smooth and non-absorbent they are.

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Tags: black oil, oil painting, oil priming, painting technique, panels