Thursday, April 10, 2008

Grandpa Genoa-Stage 8


I added ultramarine blue in the shadows of the uniform, yellow ochre mixed with hansa yellow in the lighter places of the uniform and I beat the tarnation out of it with a dry, soft brush. I glazed the background with a thin layer of dark purple and as it dried I scumbled a little white into the mix. I glazed the same mixture of yellow around the eyes, red on his hairline and then I introduced the magic...zinc white. I pulled it together and strangely it looks like flesh. It actually looks better in real life than the picture posted here. The strange thing I've noticed about the glazing technique is that it looks better the closer you get to it.

4 comments:

Arco Scheepen said...

Hi Chris,

thanks for visiting my blog. The portrait is coming along quite nicely I think!
On another note, I think for abstract painting it's more a matter of letting go a bit, and not focus too much upon what you know. But that's a learning process for me.
I you have any questions about glazing, please ask. Not that I'm the biggest knowledge base on the planet, but I'm always willing to share any knowledge I have.

Cheers,
Arco

Jared said...

Hi Chris,

You left a comment on my blog, so I decided to check yours out. I really enjoyed looking at the progress of your painting and I think you're doing some really good things with glazes already- the portrait of your grandfather looks very good.

You mentioned scumbling and I find that's a technique that works very well for varying the application of a glaze. Congrats on finding the secret of "Zinc White"- that took me awhile, but was worth the effort. A few other glazing colors you might for flesh tones are made by Gamblin. They are: Asphaltum, Brown Pink and Terra Verte. Be careful applying the first two- use plenty of medium to dilute them as they are very potent colors; the terra verte works great to tone down flesh tones with a neutral green color. Have fun experimenting.

Anonymous said...

Hi Chris,

Again thanks for your kind comments on my blog. Your portrait is coming along very nicely. The technique you use is quite different from mine, so I am hesitant to advise you on glazing. I would only caution you be be vigilant about the "fat over lean" rule and be careful of which colours you lay down first so that you do not run into any problems with dry time and the dreaded lamination / cracking that could possible occur years down the road.

You sure chose a tough picture to work from, the values are very close in this!

Keep up the good work.

Jon Laing said...

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the comment. The painting looks great. Good luck with the rest of it. Looking forward to seeing it completed.

Jon