My last glaze is dry, so it’s time for the first green glaze. I use viridian green mixed with glaze medium.
Its very bright! If I had added a bit of red to the green glaze, it would have dulled the color down (colors opposite on the color wheel neutralize each other), but I wanted to see what the bright green would look like. It’s easy to tone down the brightness with subsequent glazes, but impossible to get back the brightness once dulled!
Next, I’ll put down the first layer of paint over the underpainting of the black cloth. I’ll keep this layer a bit thin, so that the color of the underpainting shows through in places. This underlying color will unify the painting, and help to create the illusion that everything in the painting is lit by the same light source.
I kept the darks in this layer lighter in value than I’ll want the finished cloth to be. This will allow me to glaze over them with a dark glaze to achieve the darker, correct value. Glazing the darks over a lighter base results in a transparent richness that you can’t achieve with one solid paint layer.
Similarly, the light areas are painted darker than they’ll ultimately be. This allows me to scumble a light layer over a darker base. A light scumbled layer, dragged onto the painting with a dry brush, leaves a ragged, broken, textured brushstroke that allows some of the darker underlayer to show through, and mimics light falling on an object.
Linda Mann Artist 