Painting, part 2: groundwork
8/16 Second painting session: definite progress! But man, acrylics remain the very devil. Thanks to my job and recent years' exploration, I know so much more about them than I ever did before, their properties, their pigments, and yet I sometimes still feel completely at sea in rendering with them. Definitely a love-hate relationship at this point.
This time I kept inadvertantly smudging the white surface: opened a container that spattered dark green, then got red paint on my hand and tracked it onto the snow... next time I do a mostly white image, maybe I should mask out the whole background area! Argh!
I wanted to start with the central figure, because if I couldn't make that work, the picture wouldn't work, and I might as well find out at the outset. I did another layer of naphthol red to solidify coverage, then started rendering him with alizarin and then a dark mix of alizarin, phthalo, and a touch of cadmium yellow (mixed black is generally more interesting and lively than black from a tube). Then I used glazes of alizarin to bridge between darks and lights. I made a small adjustment to his right hand position. I started to introduce the concept of backlighting from the planet (which I hadn't considered in the initial phase), but naphthol red light was too weak for highlights; I needed the intense punch of cadmium orange...a regrettably expensive color.
I felt good about the red figure, the overall sense of effort and determination. I had a lot more problems with the other body. Tried various yellows: cadmium, diarylide, indian yellow, a bit of burnt sienna for shadows... dunno, I’m not feeling it yet, either the color or the contours; it looks pallid and unsubstantial.
Pencil is definitely not the best thing for underdrawing; it shows through far too much, especially on the yellow areas...but I’m not sure what to use instead. On the left is my red smudge, which I'll have to sand out later; white paint won't eradicate it.
We'd discussed putting various details on the uniforms: reflective patches, piping, pockets, insignia, etc. But once I had painted the man in red, it seemed like that would just clutter up the vivid, graphic figure, so I left it off. Besides, since no costumes exist yet, I didn't want to specify the look in a way that might later contradict the footage too much.
I added some stark figure shadows with a thin layer of phthalo, which gave it more graphic punch. But I may need to set up some mannequins to figure out the shadows’ exact shape.
I added back a little blue outlining in the snow, but mostly I continued to glaze with white (using gesso, which covers better than titanium white paint) over the snow and clouds. I decided to make the hill lines sharper towards the lake, where the clouds open, then fuzzing out where the snow is blowing more, obscuring edges. Now I wished I hadn’t done those big phthalo lines, when the field needs to be mostly stark and plain: phthalo is somewhat ineradicable. And being more comfortable with lines than paint, I had once again made the error of outline mentality: putting the strong color on the edge of the ridges, when it should be in the depths behind the ridges, with the edge being the brightest part. It took a lot of layers of white to reverse that error.
I used a template to trace a more exact circle for the yellow planet, but was pleased to find I had free-handed it almost perfectly! I fiddled around with various yellow/white/brown blends for the planet's surface; I at last found a use for the grainer brush, a weird novelty brush that creates thin parallel stripes. The planet still looks messy, but at least I have an inkling. I think I’ll try Open (slow drying) acrylics for that, so I can get softer gaseous blending. I discarded my earlier thoughts of a pure white background; this just looked too cool to pass up.
Next step: make the snow/cloud background start to work. And buy some cadmium orange and cadmium yellow deep.
This time I kept inadvertantly smudging the white surface: opened a container that spattered dark green, then got red paint on my hand and tracked it onto the snow... next time I do a mostly white image, maybe I should mask out the whole background area! Argh!
I wanted to start with the central figure, because if I couldn't make that work, the picture wouldn't work, and I might as well find out at the outset. I did another layer of naphthol red to solidify coverage, then started rendering him with alizarin and then a dark mix of alizarin, phthalo, and a touch of cadmium yellow (mixed black is generally more interesting and lively than black from a tube). Then I used glazes of alizarin to bridge between darks and lights. I made a small adjustment to his right hand position. I started to introduce the concept of backlighting from the planet (which I hadn't considered in the initial phase), but naphthol red light was too weak for highlights; I needed the intense punch of cadmium orange...a regrettably expensive color.
I felt good about the red figure, the overall sense of effort and determination. I had a lot more problems with the other body. Tried various yellows: cadmium, diarylide, indian yellow, a bit of burnt sienna for shadows... dunno, I’m not feeling it yet, either the color or the contours; it looks pallid and unsubstantial.
Pencil is definitely not the best thing for underdrawing; it shows through far too much, especially on the yellow areas...but I’m not sure what to use instead. On the left is my red smudge, which I'll have to sand out later; white paint won't eradicate it.
We'd discussed putting various details on the uniforms: reflective patches, piping, pockets, insignia, etc. But once I had painted the man in red, it seemed like that would just clutter up the vivid, graphic figure, so I left it off. Besides, since no costumes exist yet, I didn't want to specify the look in a way that might later contradict the footage too much.
I added some stark figure shadows with a thin layer of phthalo, which gave it more graphic punch. But I may need to set up some mannequins to figure out the shadows’ exact shape.
I added back a little blue outlining in the snow, but mostly I continued to glaze with white (using gesso, which covers better than titanium white paint) over the snow and clouds. I decided to make the hill lines sharper towards the lake, where the clouds open, then fuzzing out where the snow is blowing more, obscuring edges. Now I wished I hadn’t done those big phthalo lines, when the field needs to be mostly stark and plain: phthalo is somewhat ineradicable. And being more comfortable with lines than paint, I had once again made the error of outline mentality: putting the strong color on the edge of the ridges, when it should be in the depths behind the ridges, with the edge being the brightest part. It took a lot of layers of white to reverse that error.
I used a template to trace a more exact circle for the yellow planet, but was pleased to find I had free-handed it almost perfectly! I fiddled around with various yellow/white/brown blends for the planet's surface; I at last found a use for the grainer brush, a weird novelty brush that creates thin parallel stripes. The planet still looks messy, but at least I have an inkling. I think I’ll try Open (slow drying) acrylics for that, so I can get softer gaseous blending. I discarded my earlier thoughts of a pure white background; this just looked too cool to pass up.
Next step: make the snow/cloud background start to work. And buy some cadmium orange and cadmium yellow deep.