Blog Posts

Finishing a Painting Requires New Eyes

11/23/2013

Deciding when a painting is finished is truly a key part of the process of creating a work of art.

When I first started to paint, I did not know enough to see that more work needed to be done, and would fall short of a polished painting. As I learned more, finishing would become more challenging. First, I would recognize problem areas, but would not be sure what to do about them. With time, when I saw a problem,
I became better at identifying where more work was necessary and what to do about it.

However, a continuing problem is that I get so used to looking at my painting that it becomes difficult to see it with a fresh eye and recognize where more work is appropriate.

My post Glorious Galway Ireland of 11/21/2013 depicts the various stages of change that I went through until I finally "finished" the painting.

The way I have been trying to access the state of my painting is to place them on the mantle in my den when I think they are approaching the finished state. In this way I can keep looking at them as I walk around the house, and hopefully see them with a fresh eye! It also helps that my wife will look a them and give me suggestions.

With my latest painting Twin Lights, I followed this plan, but I discovered another step. After looking at it for a while and doing a number of modifications, I finally photographed the painting and had a new realization.

In general, photographing a painting is tricky business. Generally the images have to be tweaked with iPhoto or photoshop to get them to more accurately depict the original work of art. My first tweaked photo of the Twin Lights painting is shown below.

When I looked at my photo suddenly my water looked too light and blue! I had not noticed this before. In my reference photo the water was light and been working on that premix and had also put some dark streaks in the water. But seeing the photo I got a fresh look. The photo slightly over stated the actual situation. The painting was not this light. But with my newly sensitized eyes, I decided that the water needed to be darker. At this pint I stopped looking at the photo and just started to establish consistency within the painted motif.

As shown below, I did two glazes on the water. The first was a glaze of transparent dull green to reflect the large green hill in the background. On top of this green glaze i scumbled some streaks of a dull blue gray to reelect some sky color. This seemed to work pretty well as depicted below.

Well I put it back on the mantle, feeling that I had finally got it right, but one last check. My wife looked at it and asked what that white spot was in the water?? Well it was meant to be a bouy! I suddenly noticed a splotch of bright blue green in the upper right corner of the hill! Don't know how I had missed that before!

Therefore, I went back to work for another round. I crisped up the buoy with warm white, red and a shadow. I neutralized the blue green splotch, and while i was at it provided additional highlights and shaping to the trees throughout the painting.

Well, it is back on the mantle but I think It is about done now. I am just amazed how it takes me time to really see my paintings in all of their details. I am pleased with my progress, but I hope i can get faster at it!!!

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Pavonia

11/23/2013

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Pavonia by Lord Frederic Leighton was the subject of my latest class to recreate a masterwork with Scott Nickerson at Colorest in Red Bank, New Jersey. My recreation is presented below.

This was a great learning experience in that the motif contains so many classic elements, landscape, sky, cloth with folds, peacock feathers, and most importantly a portrait with great feature detail such as the eyes.

However, what always puzzled me was the history behind the painting, why this title, why peacock feathers, is there hidden meaning??? When I queried on Leighton and Pavonia painting, I was able to find much material on Leighton, plenty of Pavonia prints for sale, but no history for this work.

So I just started to query on Pavonia by itself. I got a lot of latest news from Jersey City neighborhoods and train stops, which did not seem to help my quest. Finally, I found the following on wickipedia:

A patent for the west bank of the North River was given to Michael Pauw, a burgermeesterof Amsterdam and a director of the Dutch West India Company. Pavonia is the Latinizedform of Pauw's surname, which means "peacock".[8] As was required, Pauw purchased the land from the indigenous population, although the concept of ownership differed significantly for the parties involved. Three Lenape "sold" the land for 80 fathoms (146 m) of wampum, 20 fathoms (37 m) of cloth, 12 kettles, six guns, two blankets, one double kettle, and half a barrel of beer. These transactions, dated July 12, 1630 and November 22, 1630, represent the earliest known conveyance for the area. It is said that the three were part of the same band who had sold Manhattan Island to Peter Minuit then "sold" this land, to which they had retired after that sale in 1626.

In there article I found that the Dutch had named other locations Pavonia lable, the Cunard Line had a ship named Pavonia, etc.

So Mr Pauw's name meant peacock in Dutch, with the latinized version being Pavonia! Mr Pauw's company, the Dutch West India Company, named their first colony on the west bank of the hudson Pavonia. This area later became Jersey City, New Jersey.

Now things were becoming clearer! I can understand why leighton would name the woman Pavonia in a painting with peacock feathers. By the way, he also named another painting with a woman and peacocks Pavonia. So there is some understanding why the painting was so named.

Then I realized that my teacher was born in Jersey City, which makes it appropriate that he would pick the painting for the class, but, alas, had nothing to do with it!

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More Three Dimensional Paintings

11/22/2013

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In my post of 4/12/2013, I introduced my technique to give my paintings a three dimensional feel by continuing the painting scene around to the sides of the panel.

The following photos illustrate how I applied this technique to my recent Hello and Twin Lights paintings.

HELLO

TWIN LIGHTS

This technique is both fun and challenging! First, I prepare the sides of the wooden panels with a coat or two of GAC-100 to seal the surface. then it takes care to preserve the perspective as you round the corner. But it also gives you an opportunity to enhance the story of the image, as in the case where I show the boat that has left its wake across the front plane of the painting disappearing on the left edge of the painting!

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Glorious Galway Ireland

11/21/2013

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Last summer we visited Ireland and were amazed at the beauty of the western regions. One area we visited was the Kylemore Abby in Galway. In this post I want to share how a motif presented itself to me with such force I just had to paint it!

As we toured Galway we saw one beautiful scene after another! Many shades of green, hills and water configured to take your breath away, such as the view below.

One of the sites we visited was the grounds of the Kylemore Abby,

As we walked toward the Abby the details became more interesting.

As we walked further the shapes and the light and shadows began to fascinate me.

Finally we reached the motif below!

I was struck by the way the shadow shapes had fused into a giant S shape that lead my eye around the scene!

I just had to paint it and put Sharon and myself on the pathway. Glorious Galway!!! The following image is my first pass at the painting.

After looking at this images I decided on a number of refinements. The tree branches over the road needed to be less distinct and to recede into the distance. This was achieved below by adjusting shape and color saturation. The overall temperature of the painting needed to to warmer, including the road the sky and the highlights on the foreground greenery. I also increased the highlights on the figures.

Well, I will set this on the mantle and look at it for a while, before deciding on any further modifications. After looking at it for a week or so, and seeking the opinions of others, I decided more refinements were in order. The results are show below.

From back to front the following changes were introduced.

To give a better sense of depth several changes were introduced in the distant set of four hill. The shape and coloring of the first and third hills was modified. The shapes were corrected to show a more distinct overlap where they meet. The colors of both were changed to help then recede, introducing a grey red undertone along with a blue glaze.

The far shore line of the lake was corrected to be straight across.

The last pine tree along the path was given a warm highlight to provide separation from the hill on the far side of the lake.

Warm halftones of dull red and orange were introduced into the shrubbery to give warmth and to provide shape to the forms. Similar warm elements were introduced into the upper foliage of the large tree.

A blue glaze was introduced into the shadows to reflect the color of the sky. This compliments the warmth of the sun reflected in the sunlit areas.

Looking at the three stages of the painting presented above, I feel good about the continued improvement and I feel that I have learned a great deal about dealing with greens and achieving harmony with the lights and shadows. However, I am not ready to say it is finished. It is going back on the mantle to let it sit a while longer and see if further inspiration occurs!

Well after looking at it for several weeks, my wife pointed out that the figures were too sharp and clear for being a way down the path! As always, my wife, Sharon,
was right, and I took immediate action. The results are posted below.

What Sharon pointed out was I had violated the laws of aerial perspective, which I had successfully introduced into the rest of the painting. Specifically aerial perspective states that as objects get further away colors become less intense, and contrasts become less between light and dark, and they begin to be covered by a vail of the color of the distant background. So what I did was to reduce the intensity of the colors of the figures and glaze glaze some of the distant haze over them, using the same paint used to glaze the distant hills but further diluted with medium so that there is less haze.

If you compare the previous two painting, you will see that the figures now fit better with their surroundings.

I find it fascinating how it takes a while to actually see your painting with a fresh eye, and almost puzzling why I did not see some of these items earlier on? Sometimes I seem to need a fresh eye in someone else's head! I want to thank my teacher, Scott Nickerson, for his suggestions and in instruction that have helped to train my eye and understand what to do about it. I also must thank my wife for continual insight!!!

I now think the painting is DONE at last!

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Upgrading my Sheep House for Visitors

9/12/2013

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A fascinating aspect of my website is that I get information on what search criteria people used to get to my site. I have always been surprised that one of the most consistently used search criteria is sheep house! I have never quite understood this, but many people must have sheep on their mind!

In any case, I realized that my painting titled "Sheep House" was one of my older paintings and did not reflect my latest work. Therefore, if people are coming to my site to see sheep houses, I decided that I better get my house in order!

Below are the before and after versions of my Sheep House painting. The thought process I used to perform this upgrade is outlined below.

After

Before

As I looked at my old painting with a fresh eye, I noticed a number of key aspects.

First, the focal point of the painting appeared to be an empty doorway! In reviewing my reference photos I noticed a number of drawing inaccuracies. With respect to color, I noticed several aspects. The painting had a cool feel for the sunny afternoon that I was depicting. The green grass was too cool and uniform. the colors on the house did not represent a very warm early evening light and a sky reflection. The colors in the background appeared to be fall colors. Well, my Gallery owner says she can not sell fall colors???? Don't understand this, but i won't fight the market.

Once I made all of these observations, it became imperative that I perform a major upgrade of my sheep house painting to welcome all of those sheep seeking web browsers!

First, I put a lounging sheep resting in the door, looking out at his or her friend grazing nearby. This sets up a circular path for the viewer's eyes to follow around the scene. Attracted to the sheep in the doorway, we tend to follow it's gaze out to the grazing sheep. Our eyes slide down the brightly lit back of the sheep to watch the munching of the mouth. We are then lead back along the shadow toward the house and the lounging sheep.

As our eyes travel this circular route, we stop to view some of the other aspects of the motif; including, some of the interesting grass textures and patches of dirt strewn with occasional strands of hay. We then notice the mottling on the warmly lit front of the house. Our eyes drift up to notice the blue of the sky reflected on the roof. Traveling further around the motif we notice the background, which has been muted and cooled to recede. I also included some generic farm buildings to help establish a sense of place. In the mid ground I put in a field of corn with its colorful tassels, and redid the fence to better frame the scene, carry the color of the house across and provide a natural separation for the mid ground.

In addition to all of this, I redrew the shape of the grazing sheep, some corrections to the drawing of the house, and improved the color and texture of both the sheep and the house. I also used my mixtures of OPEN and regular gel to mix with some of the ground colors to apply with a pallet knife to lend texture to the foreground ground cover (a technique that I cover in the My Painting Methodology section of the website).

To accomplish this job, I had an idea of the colors that I wanted to employ. I was about to clean one of my pallets that I had been using for several months working on another painting. I suddenly noticed that it contained most of the color mixtures that i had been thinking of using in this new project. So instead of cleaning of the old paint i had been using for several months, I continued to use the same paint and pallet for my new project.

What a saving in paint and MONEY!!! This made my frugal heart feel good! Seriously, this is a wonderful benefit of the Golden OPEN Acrylic paints with their controllable drying times. This is not only economical, but having the same pools of color to use and modify through out the life of a painting (or several paintings) leads to a natural color harmony. I love these paints.

The following photo depicts my multi-month pallet at the conclusion of the Sheep House painting upgrade.

For those interested in more details on the specific painting techniques that I employed for this project, you can check out the following references.

I used my Augmented Golden OPEN Modern Color Set as described in the Mixing Colors in the Modern Color Gamut section of the My Painting Methodology section of this website.

I realized the long usable paint life on my pallet using the techniques described in the Pallet Management section of the My Painting Methodology section of this website

I achieved the textured foreground surface using the techniques described in the Pallet Knife Painting section of My Painting Methodology section of this website. Specifically I mixed a medium consisting of half OPEN Gel medium and half regular Golden Gel medium. I then mixed some of this with the various colors that I wanted to apply with a thick texture in the grass and the bits of hay. The result has a drying time about the same as my normal application of the OPEN paints.

I used extensive glazing to provide the lighting and aerial perspective effects that I desired. I used the techniques described in the Glazing Techniques section of the My Painting Methodology section of this website, and in my 8/31/13 Blog Post "Glorious Glazing on the Met Life Tower" on this website. Glazing was employed extensively in the grass and dirt, on the front of the building to give various warm tones, on the roof of the building to give the sky reflection, and in the background trees and buildings to effect aerial perspective.

Of specific interest is the glaze used for the sky reflection on the roof and on the background buildings and trees. For this I used a mixture of a slightly neutralized Anthraquinone Blue and and the transparent Zinc While thinned with OPEN Gloss Medium. Less medium was used in the galzes on the roof and more medium was used on the glazing of the background trees and buildings to achieve a more subtle effect.

This was a fun project and afforded a interesting application of the flexible capabilities of the Golden OPEN paints.

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Glorious Glazing on the Met Life Tower

8/31/2013

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Recently, my teacher, Scott Nickerson, has been emphasizing the benefits of glazing. The following photos illustrate my use of glazing in the sky of my painting, "Met Life Tower".

For glazing I dilute my OPEN acrylic paints with Golden OPEN Acrylic Medium (Gloss). The ratio of paint to medium determines the transparency of the glaze. I find glazing to be particularly effective in skies. The multiple layers of pigment appears to mimic the multiple layers of particles in the air, providing a transparency and depth to the sky not attainable with a straight application of paint.

Note in the Initial Version below, the sky cloud and sky shapes are established, but the sky appears somewhat flat with not a great feeling of depth from the top to the horizon.

In the Intermediate Version 1, glazing has been added: a white yellow toward the horizon, a purple underneath and within the cloud, and a warm red at the top of the sky. Now the horizon and the bottom of the cloud begin to recede, the cloud has more form and the top of the sky is looking warmer and more colorful.

In the Intermediate Version 2, there is more of the same types of glazing, with the addition of yellow within the cloud to provide form and warmth of the setting sun.

In the Final Version, the glazing further punches up the effects started in the previous steps. Particularly more yellow/white glaze was used in the lower part of the sky. Some yellow glaze was used to neutralize some of the purple under side of the cloud and provide some warmth. Additional yellow glaze was used in the sunlit portions of the clouds. Additional warm yellow glaze was randomly applied to the top of the sky and brought down into the top portions of the cloud.

Note also that in each stage warm glazes were applied to the sunny face of the Met Life Tower, to reflect the warmth of the evening sum.

All of these glazing efforts have resulted in a transparent sky and clouds that recede towards the horizon, and serves to help pop the dramatic shape of the Met Life Tower.

Final Version

Intermediate Version 2

Intermediate Version 1

Initial Version

Another example of glazing to refine the sky is my Oceanic Bridge Painting presented below in three stages. Note that at each stage the glazing modifications were also applied to the clouds and the water to preserve the color relationships.

Final Version

Intermediate Version

Initial Version

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What a Difference Four Years can Make

8/30/2013

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Every once in a while you may wonder if you are making progress. As my painting understanding and techniques have evolved, every once in a while I look at one of my old paintings and say, "gee did I do that"! Many of my old works I have destroyed and discarded, chalking it up to experience. However, once in a while I recognize an old work that had good bones and could be improved using some of my new techniques.

A case in point is the new and old versions of the rooster titled "HI Look at Me".

New Version

Old Version

In this case I loved the image of the imperious and perky rooster and the basic composition.

The specific new skills that I wanted to bring to bear on this work were improvements in drawing, color, and the painting techniques of impasto knife work and glazing. After describing the specific changes to the rooster, I will outline a few of the major sources that have provided breakthroughs for me in the continual effort to learn to paint.

I still had my old reference photos and was able to significantly improve the drawing of both the large shapes and many small details. I am amazed that as my drawing skills improve, I see details that I previously did not seem to even recognize, such as the face and the individual feathers. I did this by directly painting over the old image on the canvas!

In the area of color I had used a warm burnt sienna type basis for the feathers. I now recognized that there was more of a magenta tinge to the feathers. Now that I am using my Augmented Modern Color pallet exclusively, I switched to a basic triad of quinacridone magenta, hansa yellow medium, and phthalo green (blue shade). Varying these components with a judicious use of white, I was able to better replicate be intensity of the beautiful rooster feathers.

In addition to appropriate color mixing, part of the replication of the intensity of the feathers was the use of glazing. I use the Golden OPEN Acrylic Medium (Gloss) with appropriate amounts of my OPEN paint to control the transparency of the glazes. Multi layers of slightly different color glazes provides a depth and vibrance to the color that a straight application of paint can not achieve. The final layers of more opaque paints provided the highlights.

In some cases a final glaze of pure color helped to give an appropriate glow and temperature. For example, a final glaze of napthol red light gave a warmer glow to the sunny side of the neck region. Similarly, a final glaze of hansa yellow medium gave a glow to the chest area.

Knife work was used to give the texture of grass to the foreground of the grassy area. A mixture of OPEN and regular gel mediums was used with various green mixtures to give the foreground grass texture, as described in My Painting Methodology section of the website. Note the texture fades away as you go into the background. This along with a cooler coloring helps the ground recede and helps pop the foreground. Patches of dirt were added to add interest to the ground. As a final step a spotty application of a yellow glaze was added to the foreground to further reinforce the sense of space and the warmth of the sunshine.

I like to draw attention to the shadow area under the rooster, Note it touches the lighter tufts of tail feathers to add emphasis. Also note that while it is in shadow, you can still se the texture of slight color variations in the grass in the shadow area. this was achieved in to ways. First the shadow was achieved by glazing a red over the normally painted grass. Finally, additional strokes of grass were painted directly into the shadow area. Note also that there are a number of sunny blades of grass that stick up in front of the shadow area to give a realistic feel of space and light.

This was very satisfying to apply what I have learned to improve one of my old painting.

I just want to summarize the key elements that have driven my growth as a painter. The first is of course hard and continual work! Beyond that the follow are some of the key elements.

1. Studying with my teacher Scott Nickerson, a master oil painter, www.scottnickersonfinearts.com. Scott has guided me over the years through the details of drawing, composition, value, creating form, and introduced me to the power of techniques such as glazing and color strategies. Of particular value has been Scott's classes to recreate a master painting. Examples of my work in these classes can be seen in my various galleries on the website, including works by masters such as Vermeer Gerome, Cott, Bougeoreau, Bierstadt, Caravaggio, and Lefebvre. I can not over emphasize the value of recreating a master's work. The greatest aspect is that you have a very specific target to achieve. You can't just do anything you want. Scott is outstanding in helping you figure out what was done and how to achieve it.

2. Studying the Bargue, Gerome Drawing course. Scott initially introduced the course to me. I went on to study it and reproduce the various exercises on my own. After havein worked on this for several months, I went to a wonderful exhibit on VanGogh's work in Amsterdam. The first work in the exhibit was Vangogh copy of one of the Bargue exercises which I just completed my self. It turns out that VanGogh had work through the exercises two times on his own. I subsequently learned that Picasso and many other have also worked on these drawing exercises.

3. The introduction by Golden Paints of the new OPEN Acrylics, which have completely controllable drying times. With research and the help of the Golden staff i have figured out how to replicate any of the oil painting techniques that i have come across. Also as I describe in My Painting methodology section, my paints stay workable on my pallet for months and allow me to work on my paintings over time with the same color mixtures available. This leads to color harmony and saves a lot of money in paints!!!

4. Color mixing has been on ongoing learning process. my first beakthrough came studying Michael Wilcox's book "Blue and Yellow Don't make Green" along with his other books from the School of Color. Then I read the magnificant book by James Gurney, "Color and Light , a Guide for the Realist Painter", which introduced cancepts such a color gamut, which I find very useful, particularly for appreciating the next and most important source. Golden Paint Company introduced the Modern Color Set and mixing guidelines, which I describe in detail in the My Painting Methodology section of the website. I added some whites and black, which I call my Augmented Modern Color Pallet, with which i can mix virtually any color. I no longer have to keep buying different tube colors of paint!!! This is a great cost saving, leads to greater color harmony, and is really fun to use. I have also figured how to mix the various OPEN and regular mediums to control texture and transparency to support many pallet knife and glazing techniques.

Well these are some of the key events along my artistic journey to date! I present them hear in that they may help others avoid some of the dead ends and false starts that I experienced along the way.

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Caravaggio's Bacchus Righted

6/18/2013

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My current Master Class with Scott Nickerson at Colorest is to recreate Caravaggio's painting Bacchus. This is not one of my favorite paintings, depicting a drunken teenage Italian youth sitting behind a bowl of rotting fruit. However, it has been a fascinating project in many ways.

Technically, it has many good challenges including facial portrait, body parts and skin tones, still life with fruit, and fabric with folds! Historically, it also has many mysteries!

Caravaggio painted this work while he was living with a Cardinal near the Piazza Navona in Rome. This Cardinal was interested in both art and science. One of his friends was the person who built the telescope for Galileo. In those days art and science were very close. The importance of this is that Caravaggio could have had access to the best optics of his day.

This is important in light of David Hockney's book, "Secret Knowledge - Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters". In this book Hockney describes his research that shows that it is highly probable that many artists of this period used optical devices, consisting of mirrors and lenses to assist them in drawing, or tracing, the images that they were to paint.

I recommend the book as a fascinating read! Some people in the art world get upset by this theory. However, I think it just makes sense. At that time artists and opticians were in the same trade unions. Artists made their living turning out paintings and anything that helped their output had to make sense. Artists were in competition and were very secretive about their methodologies, however there is even written documentation about their use of optics.

Hockney makes an empirical observation that suddenly at the time of the invention of optics, paintings of table settings suddenly started to show the wine glasses on the left hand side! The potential result of the use of optics which reverse the image.

Notice that Caravaggio's Bacchus is holding the wine glass with his left hand! Likely the result of the optics that Caravaggio used reversing the actual image. Interestingly enough, there is no evidence that Caravaggio ever made any drawing for his paintings.

Well, I was convinced! So I decided to "Right" my image of Bacchus. So I flipped the image and represent Bacchus offering us the glass of wine with his "right" hand! The following photo depicts an early status of my painting Bacchus Righted. I assume that this depicts the actual motif that Caravaggio was painting from.

I think I also discovered another optical anomaly in the painting. I had always been bothered by the way the wine glass was depicted in the original painting. My wife astutely observed that is was tilted, which I show in the photo below.

This could be the result of the fisheye effect of optics!? Therefore, I am going to further "correct" my painting by "righting" the wine glass and returned it to its true level! The result of this "correction" along with refinements in the fabric, fruit and face is depicted in the following photo.

I could go on forever tuning this painting. However, I have worked on it for over ten weeks as part of Scott Nickerson's Master Class at Colorest in Red Bank, New Jersey, and I am going to call it complete for now.

Looking back on the painting process, one of the most striking observations is how well the color pool painting technique using Golden OPEN acrylic paints has worked for me. The controlled drying OPEN acrylics have stayed workable on my pallet throughout the ten week period (using the techniques that I detail in the My Painting Methodology section of the website). This has enabled me to reuse the same pools of mixed colors, or add to and modify an existing pool throughout the painting process, simplifying my painting efforts and maintaining color harmony.

I have actually maintained two pallets during the ten week painting process. They are pictured below. You can find every tone or glaze you see in the painting on these two pallets.

I have actually not added new paint from a tube to the pallet for the last month! This is a really great benefit to me!

I can not over emphasize the benefit of the controlled drying time of the Golden OPEN acrylic paints. When I showed a fellow student, who uses oils, that I have been using the same pools of color for the ten week period, she was amazed and said, "I should switch to acrylics!". Yes, but only OPEN acrylics!

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Vinyl Cover for The Battery Electric

6/5/2013

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My latest painting is an illustration for the cover of the new Vinyl recording of my son Brent's band Battery Electric, to be released later this summer. Brent had very definite ideas of the genre style that he wanted. This was an interesting challenge. Adapting my painting technique to realize this style was also a challenge and is the subject of this post.

Of course I used my Golden OPEN Modern Color Pallet that I discuss in detail in the My Painting Methodology section of the website. The good news my pallet worked great. The same mixtures remained workable for the month period that I worked on this illustration. I can not over estimate the value of this capability. I was always able to reuse the same colors or slightly modify an existing color to meet the current need. My pallet is pictured below, where you can find all of the colors and glazes in the final painting!

However, there were some unusual challenges in this project that I do not encounter in my normal more classical paintings. First, I transferred an number of initial sketches to the painting surface at various points in the painting process. Second, I needed to overlay some vibrant colored letters on my painting surface. To meet both of these challenges I combined my OPEN acrylics with different regular Golden mediums.

When I wanted to transfer a drawing to an already partially painted surface, I first covered the existing surface with a coat of Golden Fluid matte Medium. This would dry quickly. I then used tracing paper to transfer the image, and then sealed the transfer with another layer of Fluid Matte Medium. I could then paint over the sketch which always seemed to involve many deviations from the sketch. I would make sure that the matte surface was completely covered with a same underlying paint to fully restore the normal gloss finish of the painting (This was easy to do in that my pallet always contained a color pool for all of the colors that had been used in the painting up to that time!). This process was used to transfer a sketch for the car and lettering for example.

The lettering, however, involved another challenge. As you can really almost see in the photo above, I wanted the letters to have a textured, spooky shape and surface. Transferring the sketched letters merely solved the spacial placement issues.

To get these brilliant colored letters over a previously painted surface was also a challenge in that the colors on my modern pallet, with the exception of titanium white and carbon black, are relatively transparent. To get around this issue and to create the bumpy surface and outlines that I wanted, I devised the following technique. First I mixed my OPEN titanium white with Golden Polymer Medium (Gloss), which is a fast drying regular acrylic medium. The resulting white mixture had body and would dry quickly. I then applied this mixture with a small flat brush to squiggle and lump the shapes of my letters over my linear transferred sketch. These white letters dried quickly so that I could go right ahead with the letter coloring.

At this point I had great lumpy, spooky white lettering. I would then glaze the final relatively transparent colors heavily over the white base. This was done for both the yellow and red lettering that you can see above. Note that heavily glazing the transparent colors over the white base results in the rich and brilliant spooky lettering that I was told by my son that he had to have! He's a tough customer!

The reason that I am describing this process is to illustrate how the Golden OPEN Acrylics, when combined with the appropriate mediums, is an extremely flexible medium with respect to properties such as drying time, body, and transparency. It just takes imagination on how to combine these great products!

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A New Dimension - My paintings as Three Dimensional Objects

4/11/2013

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Depending on the surface that i am going to paint on, I am now applying a number of techniques for preparing the surfaces prior to painting, complete finishing processes of sealing coats and varnish layers to give my paintings a polished look and an archival feel.

In this post I will describe how I have used these techniques to give some of my paintings a three dimensional look of an art object, as opposed to only a two dimensional painting.

To accomplish this I have chosen to paint on panels mounted on a 1.5 inch deep cradle. I prepared the wooden edges of the cradle with two coats of Golden GAC 100 Multi-Purpose Polymer sealer, followed by several coats of Gesso, sanded to a smooth finish. I then continue my painting around the edge. I chose the 1.5 inch depth in that I feel that is is sufficient to give a three dimensional feel without overdoing it, keeping the side panels small with respect to the front image surface.

Pictured below are side views of my "Oceanic Bridge", "Fishing in the Clouds" and "Empire State Building" paintings.

As you can see, the paintings have become three dimensional objects that can be viewed from any angle to get a slightly different impression.

When the sealing and varnish coats are completed, my intension is that these painting objects will give the impression of viewing a smooth block of marble mounted on the wall. My hope is to give my representational realistic paintings a modern feel.

In each case, when the painting was finished I applied a sealing coat to provide a uniform finish. I currently use a mixture of half Acrylic Glazing Liquid (Gloss) and half Aribrush Medium. The airbrush medium is a bit matte in finish which takes the high shine off of the gloss Glazing Liquid, yielding a very nice mildly satin finish. I arrived at this combination with the Golden tech support folks. My major criteria was that I must have a sealing coat that is absolutely smooth and will not add any brush stroke marks to the surface of the painting.

The following is a view of the Oceanic Bridge painting after the application of the sealing coat.

When I apply a final varnish coat to a painting, again my criteria is that the application of the varnish layer adds not additional brush marks to the surface. The mixture that I use is 4 parts Polymer Varnish with UVLS (Gloss), 1 part Polymer Varnish with UVLS (Satin), and 2 parts distilled water. This again yields a mildly satin finish.

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Finishing a Painting Requires New Eyes

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