Comments | gloriana: Painting progress as of today

gloriana

Painting progress as of today

Feb 02, 2011 17:16

Feel free to skip if you don't want to see things in mid paint :) :)

So the Vermeer has moved to the next stage, and the Caravaggio has been begun. It's the first time I'm using full Renaissance technique, so - as much to aid my failing memory as anything - details and further pics under the cut.

( First, the Caravaggio )

Comments 19

the_emu February 3 2011, 13:58:45 UTC

These are coming up lovely. Though y'know, at some point extreme patience segues into some form of mental disorder. Clearly, oil painters have it.

The Caravaggio definitely has potential: look at those nipples! The angle up his wrap!

What dimensions are these, btw?

8^-

gloriana February 3 2011, 18:52:44 UTC

hough y'know, at some point extreme patience segues into some form of mental disorder. Clearly, oil painters have it.

You kid not. The main disadvantage to oils: they take time. Vermeer would do one a year (though he did have another fulltime job, and many many children to occupy his time).

look at those nipples! The angle up his wrap!

Why do you think I chose it, pray?

The two of them go together as a diptych - think of it as innocence and experience :) :)

They're reasonably small - 11x22 each. I just finished building the panel for the landscape we are doing next, which is 30x30, and have decided that paintings are like cars: you shouldn't do/have one which is taller than you are.

cbtreks February 3 2011, 16:03:37 UTC

This is very interesting, seeing the different steps and how the paintings come together. What's the purpose behind the multiple layers of neutral toned paint before the color?

gloriana February 3 2011, 19:02:01 UTC

Well, if you are painting the way Vermeer did, you apply the colours in very thin layers of glaze (ie maybe 10% of coloured paint to 90% oil/turps/varnish mix), so they go on translucently; and he would do up to thirty layers like that. The plus is that the light actually enters the paint layers and bounces around in there before it reaches your eyes, so there is a depth and lustre you can't get any other way. But since the paint is only slowly building up towards being opaque, it's actually the greyscale underneath that helps to determine the black/white spectrum of the final picture, and even much of the fine detail ( ... )

cbtreks February 5 2011, 22:07:18 UTC

Thank you. Some day I'd like to take drawing classes. I draw occasionally - I'm neither good nor bad, just average. (Literally - I took a drawing class at a local college when I was a senior in high school and earned a C.) Perhaps when I'm done with this library science degree, I'll do that. In any case, I like learning why people do things the way they do when they're painting or drawing.