Tuesday, March 16, 2010

New Painting Technique

Sometimes I can spend all my time painting and forget to continue my oil painting knowledge and technique. Oil paint is a rather complicated medium with a lot of "rules" that must be observed in order for the work to have any longevity. It can be a little overwhelming when it comes to grounds, mediums and paints and their proper use to create a lasting piece of art.

I spent some time this weekend refreshing myself by reading about oil paints and methods. I looked at some amazing artwork that really challenged me to stretch my approach.
In my work, a painting is created in a fairly direct manner, meaning I mix and apply the paint directly from the tube modeling it within the value scale until I achieve my vision.

I decided to try the indirect method with the peacock. I began by painting a highly detailed image in grays. This is called grisaille and will serve as the structure for the completed work. Once it is dry I will apply several glazes of color over the next weeks until I get what I want. In other words the colors are optically rather than physically mixed. It is much like stacking pieces of colored glass on top of each other to obtain a luminous result.
I will post images as a go along. Hang in with me and lets see how it goes.

5 comments:

Maureen said...

I'm very interested to watch how this progresses! I already like it a lot.

jeanne with Glass Aglow said...

Tracey, nice to see your blog. Sharing w others is so important to my view of life, so I'm excited when another artist also shares information.
This tecnique is one I enjoy using the most when oil painting. Nice to hear of your approach to your fabulous peacock! It's amazing!
jeanne

Unknown said...

Cool Tracey, how strange you should do this because I have done a similar thing with a painting nearly complete. It was influenced by something I read on a 'flemish masters technique' Basically they use about 7 layers of paint, time consuming so I havent followed it word by word!

Kathleen Krucoff said...

What a great way to stretch. Really looking forward to seeing where you take this. Of course, I loved the glass analogy you used too! :D

Dean Grey said...

Tracey!

I've heard of this technique before. It's an old master's way of painting, right?

I can't wait to see how this looks compared with your previous works!

-Dean