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Sunday, May 24, 2009

Work in Progress, new Grisaille, acrylic profile to be glazed in oils



Work in Progress, 12 x 12 inches on canvas. This underpainting is done in arylics, using violet oxide by Golden. Love that color! I've done other underpaintings with it. It will be glazed in oils once the underpainting is completed.

 The figure is from a photo I took of a professional model during a painting studio I go to weekly. My photos many times come out just a little blurred, but they are still useful for painting. Working from a photo presents other challenges: the camera can distort proportions, and the lighting can come out way different from how you remember the scene, so those things have to be compensated for. I never used to want to work from photos, but now I have a whole collection of ones I took. I find they are useful but be careful not to get caught up in them! That's where imagination and memory come to the rescue. 

When I scanned this, it was too big for the scanner bed, so I did it in 2 pieces. When I pasted the 2 pieces together one was darker than the other, so I used Levels in Photoshop to match them in color. Then I blurred the seam line in places where it still showed to stitch the 2 halves together.

3 comments:

Laura Grimes said...

I'll have to try that violet oxide sometime. It is a wonderful color!

Unknown said...

I love it! You really got my likeness!

Theresa Taylor Bayer said...

Hi Laura, you'll love that violet oxide, they have it at Jerry's Artarama.

Waverly, you recognized it! That's cool! I had decided not to say, so it's passed the likeness test.