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Posted
I am looking at an a4 canvass board with a few pencil lines on it. I have sketched out the rough areas of a portrait including the upper body, it may be a little small to get the full details of the face but I am happy with the composition.
As usual the models hair is flying around a bit (maybe you have seen ancient depictions of angels where the cloth that adorns them always seems to defy gravity and have a weightless quality... well this girls hair is the same) the lighting is strong with deep shadows and highlights and the background does a gradient....
I have looked at this for a while, I am planning to test out the oil paints I bought recently but wondering how to get going as I have some choices to make.
On the one hand I feel like I understand black and white much better than colour, I might do well to paint it all in black and white and then do the colours over the top. This way I can match the light/dark value of the black and white image and hopefully retain the form.
Part of me wants to block in the area's of colour with acrylic and then use oils over the top (a common approach, though one that maybe should be discouraged on principle of good working practice... not that it matters much on a small experimental piece of an unknown and amateur artist)
Another part of me wants to go in with oils from the outset, but it seems daunting given the complexity of the hair, and the subtlety of the skin tones.
Maybe I just want to procrastinate a bit longer, but what is the preferential modus operandi? Pro's and con's... opinions welcome.
Posted
We'll all vary in our approach, David - he said, tremendously helpfully...
Starting a new painting is always a test of confidence - far more than skill; and I get just as nervous about starting a painting now as I did 50 years ago: possibly more so - ignorance can be bliss.
But: you've got a canvas board, not a stretched canvas, and that will reduce the problem of incompatibility between acrylic and oil paint layers. Won't remove it, but will reduce it, especially if the board is reasonably rigid - it's movement that can cause much of the trouble. So you could start your painting off in acrylic if that would make you less apprehensive; and as you correctly observe, it's not a tragedy if it all goes wrong - and that's true of all of us too. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, etc..... start all over again.
The best way, even so, is to go in with the oil paint - thinly to begin with (probably a bit easier: but of course you could go right in with thick paint if you wanted a bit of an adventure), reduced with oil or solvent as you like; if you're working on a white canvas you might even find the oil paint easier than acrylic. Oil is receptive to more oil - even if it weren't the better way in terms of picture integrity, I think I'd still go in with the oil out of practical preference.
Your other choice, or one of them, is to build up your portrait in glazes of transparent colour over a base - whether working in acrylic or oil, I think a genuine black and white, as opposed to a burnt sienna/blue mix, would be harsh and distort the colours laid over it. Apart from which, oil black takes a while to dry - and is relatively heavy in oil: but if you want to go that way, mix the black, or use Mars Black, which is less oil rich. I'm assuming though that you really mean a black and white acrylic study - since you know that tube blacks in oil are problematic (I know you know that, because you bought my e-book!).
You have several choices - which is probably better than being restricted to one; those you describe are entirely viable, but perhaps consider two others - one, getting your drawing right with a study in umber and either a quick-drying white (say an Alkyd, like Griffin) - lead white would be ideal, but finding it these days is the problem - or allowing white canvas to do the job. Or perhaps a study in terre verte, if you have it: it dries fast, and works well with glazes. So basically, a grisaille; or using your existing drawing to guide your subsequent colours.
I hope others will address this too: especially our portraitists. But that's how I'd be thinking at this point.
Posted
I used white, Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Yellow, and Alazarin Crimson (Sorry Robert, it was the red they included in the paint set - I will replace with something lightfast if ever I get properly into this lark)
The result is in the gallery, but I will post it here too. It looks a bit rough around the edges, I just slapped the paint down... I didn't look at my reference too much after my initial drawing. I liked that the paint is very opaque and that lines can be softened easily. This is the first time I painted something which is really ill-defined. I mean if you look at the nose there is no detail at all except just a little blob of white. I didn't like cleaning the brushes, nor that I had an unsuitable working environment I just used the paints straight out of the tube.
More paint ended up on me than the canvass and I smeared it all over the bottom right corner with my hand.
