Linda Mann Artist

My underpainting is completed and dry, and I’m ready to begin painting! (For more info on underpainting, see Underpainting)

I began with the black background. It’s slightly darker on the left. I mixed three shades of the black, applied them, then blended them together. Getting a smooth transition of tone is one of the hardest things to achieve in paint. I’ll have to tackle the problem again when I paint the light blue board leaning against the wall. I also began putting in the local colors on the vase. I’m not going for subtlety yet- just the basic colors. I can’t judge color and value properly until I have more colors down to compare. Any detail put in now would probably need to be corrected and painted over anyway. I painted what will be the green areas of the vase and crystal with cadmium yellow, in preparation for glazing in green. This will give me a brighter green than I could get with a mixed green.

Below, I’ve continued putting in local colors on the tabletop and scarf. The paint on the background has sunken in. That’s when the oils in a paint mixture are absorbed into the underlayer. This results in a spotty, matt finish. I can correct this later and bring back the shine with a thin layer of my glaze medium.

Below, I’ve tackled the blue background. For this, I mixed 7 values of the blue, so I could get a smooth transition from darkest on the left to lightest on the right. I knew that there was a good chance I’d need to re-paint this, but I took a shot at it anyway. As it turns out, it wasn’t as smooth a transition as I’d like, so I’ll just correct it later! By the way, this took me several hours! Painting really does take time. I painted the shadow cast by the lamp much lighter than it will be because I plan on glazing it later. I like the way that glazing shadows mimics the look of an actual shadow in its transparency and subtlety.

I’ve finished most of the first layer below. I still have to do the paper lampshade. I’ll have to let this layer dry before I can start painting over it with glazes and direct paint.

Here’s a close-up, below. You can see how I’m still avoiding detail and subtle gradations of color. That will happen soon! Slow and steady is the name of the game.