Drunk on Color; Part Deux

Drunk on Color, part Deux

This blog post is a continuation of my “ode to colour” for the painting in progress, “Lady Bugs:3, Thrasher; 0”

Last time I wrote about the joys of painting colorful foliage in the far background. I painted this foliage in opaque colors, using a progression of hues from light to dark values. This kind of painting has a unique charm all it's own. It is direct, in other words “WYSIWYG” (What You See Is What You Get) and yet the progression of values of the colors is planned.

In this next segment of the painting, I switched to my current favorite painting style, acrylic glazes. This style of painting is similar to Photoshop layers of colour, with the medium an acrylic glazing medium rather than the layers in the computer program. This takes multiple layers painted separately and dried, before the next layer is applied. This avoids muddying of colors that can sometimes happen when painting opaquely.

This is the mid ground section composed of fall dogwood leaves, backlit in morning sunlight.  

A layer of hansa yellow and quinacridone crimson have been applied. The fluid acrylic paint has been mixed with an acrylic glazing liquid that thins it without diluting the color load of the pigment. The finish of the paint film has a slight “tooth” and is not rubbery, like normal “full bodied” acrylic paints.

I laid in more layers of the crimson, with additional hints of yellow and green:

And finally I laid in a third layer of colours, including some purples (mixtures of crimson and cobalt blue) and greens. I laid in some detailing of leaf veining, and leaf outlines.....but didn't want too much detailing to derail the middle ground illusion.

I usually try to paint “locally” i.e. concentrate on individual portions of a painting, but try to remain aware of the “global” aspect of the painting.....i.e. How each segment relates to the whole “illusion of reality “of my paining.

It's been fun to use two different styles of painting, opaque and glazed, in the same painting. They do two different jobs, background and mid ground quite well. Next time I'm pulling things altogether with the focal point.