Genesis of an oil painting - my method.
People often ask me how I come up with my compositions, so here is an example of how I work.
Putting a composition together is similar to cooking for me. I think about the elements I want in the painting, and start collecting ideas for color, iconographic elements, background or foreground motifs. Here is a collection of documents that I collected for this work, although all of them did not find their way into my painting:
I do a series of virtual compositions on the computer. These are, in a way, my sketchbook. I try out all different sorts of things, and often do many different versions of virtuals for the same painting. Here is the virtual I decided to use:
And here is one of the rejected ones:
When I feel like I have solved enough issues to pick up a paintbrush, I start working in acrylic. I like acrylic for this part of the process because it allows me to make as many changes as I feel necessary, quickly. A couple photos of this part of the project:
Once my composition is decided, I move on to oil. l start by putting veils of white (optical grays) over all of the painting and enhancing form:
Then I start glazing down. The intensity of the color is arrived at through a repetition of this process: glaze, scumble (bring up whites) again and again. This is the time consuming part. As the layers of glaze are applied, they merge and lose a bit of their strength, so at the end of the painting, I do one final glaze which may seem unnecessary or superfluous. But since we know that oil paint becomes more transparent as time passes, an extra glaze is my insurance for the future that the intensity of the color in the painting will remain strong.
I hope this explanation will be of interest to the Steemit audience, and encourage questions, comments, and of course, upvotes and resteems.
My website: www.kathleenscarboro.fr
good post with precise and detailed explanation of the technique and steps. quoto!
Thank you, glad you enjoyed it.
Wonderful post! It's fascinating to see other artist's creative process and you have shown yours in so much detail! I particularly find the development of the idea, or the assembly of the ingredients, interesting as an approach.
Thank you. Yes we all find our own methods and it is interesting to see the paths people follow to give birth to their art work. Photoshop was a monumental discovery for me - I thought they had invented something I had imagined. I used to work with tracing paper before, and layer masks are so much quicker and easier to use!
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YES
And thank you.
It's Amazing what you are doing I really like your work and I find it really interesting.
You have been scouted by @promo-mentors. We are a community of new and veteran Steemians and we are always on the look out for promising authors.
I would like to invite you to our discord group https://discord.gg/vDPAFqb.
When you are there send me a message if you get lost! (My Discord name is the same as here on Steemit)
Thank you. I have joined your discord group.
Every bit of it is beautiful! Rejected or not I still love how each element was incorporated each telling a story of its own. Just like with cooking, I am fascinated how artistic people can be. I would look at the ingredients/elements and don't know how much to put into one big picture.
Thank you. Sometimes my brain overloads because of the number of choices. Digital compositions are a good break from the actual paintings because they are quick to do and I can explore so many possibilities.
Thank goodness for technology. The choices and possibilities we want to create were not only made easier to do but it makes us do more.
It really revolutionized composition for me.
Oh my yes, it is of great interest ! ^_^ Thanks for sharing your process with us, this is always so interesting to see the techniques, I love to share mines from time to time and I notice that it increases the inspiration and the creativity in people that are seeing the process...=)
I thought it might interest others because we each have a very specific way of going about creating a piece of art work. Glad you enjoyed it.
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Amazing... I really like the warm colours.
I will follow you (in case you decide to post more).
Thank you, so glad you like it.
Don't you love process! I love process in my art as much (sometimes more)then the finished result.
You approach it in some ways like I do. I love to play digitally with various layers of colour and imagery. The computer has made it much nicer to play with composition and such.
When I used to be primarly a printmaker, I'd go from real world to digital to real world to digital many times before the final image was done and printed and screenprinted. All of it was fun.
Now with painting, many times the final piece remains digital, but I still do love to work with oils on canvas, but now I definitely play more with it on the computer before laying it out on the canvas and going.
Do you really paint oil onto your acrylic underneath? I mean I suppose gesso is acrylic and we paint our oil on that. If so, that is genius. I might have to try that myself. I much prefer oil for its colour and luminous quality and I am forever going back into a piece, so acrylic is too fast for me, but this is really an amazing idea.
Have you tried the water soluble oil paints? I haven't because I don't really understand them, but would love a critique of them from an actual oil painter who has used them.
I was right, too, I thought I felt a bit of klimt in there! I love taking inspiration from my favourite artists. I love the portrait painters of the 19th century and often am inspired by their use of light and brushstroke. I love that art is a celebration of our own vision as well as an homage to those we love that painted before us.
Thank you @donnadavisart. I think we all have our own very personal methods, on the computer and on the canvas. You can always paint in oil over acrylic, since acrylic dries quickly and attains its eternal condition in a half hour or so. The contrary would not be possible. Once you have moved on to oil, you can't go back to acrylic because oil dries very slowly and the acrylic on top of the oil would crack as the oil dried. When I move to oils, I start doing veils of white and building up of form with white; otherwise the glazing would make everything too dark. After each glaze I scumble in whites. I use a medium and emulsion that I make myself; the recipes were done by my teacher. I haven't tried other methods because I feel at ease with my technique and it does what I want.
There have been such fabulous painters before us who have left us great work to inspire us and to aspire to!