June 11th, The first coat

First Coat

Okay, here we go.  The first bit of paint has touched the surface.  How does it look?

I told ya I draw it straight so I can mess it up with paint.  I have used a Fast Matt Burnt Umber, Ivory Black, Prussian Blue, and Alkyd Titanium White.  Here's why:

Fast Matt stuff is a dark brown and dries quickly - it's an Alkyd paint.  I mix a little bit of black into it to make it darker.  This is used to create additional texture.

The white is an Alkyd also so it dies fast.  This is mixed with the above brown and black, along with the blue to create the blue you see on the painting.  I put this down because I don't want you to see black in my sky colors as I skim across for texture.  This will make sense later, but needs to be thought about now.

Here's a close up of the texture so far:

First Coat and texture

I'm not exactly happy with the grey color of the base coat.  You can see how light it is by the whales far flipper.  I may need to change this in the future - we'll see.  So what comes next?  I'm going to darken up the background color near the bottom of the painting and get rid of the light grey I don't like.  I'm going to add another blue color to the sky to bring out the texture.  After that, the set up process should be done and I'll get into the straight paint.

At this stage of the painting I'm still messing around.  I'm not sure what to try next and whatever I try I'm not sure how it will turn out.  When I get into the straight paint portion I will be more at home but I will be working around or through other mistakes or happy accidents.  A painting shouldn't have a set process.  They shouldn't be assembly line made.  In every painting there should be a struggle, there should be a new discovery, there should be a culmination of your talent right there in front of you.  If this stuff is not there then what are you painting for?

Larry