A Piece of Me #09, underdrawing in pen and ink

A Piece of Me #09, acrylic on panel. 21 x 13.3 cm or 5 1/4 x 8 1/4 in.

Moving into the figurative pieces now especially those with serious flesh tones. This composition was mostly sweater, a little shirt and a piece of neck.

The approach called for an un treated panel (so no cotton or linen glued to the substrate to soften the blow). That meant that the strokes would speak for themselves and also would be a little slow in drying. If you take that into account, no problem, but if you try to work too fast (which I did) you can experience “holes” where the paint suddenly lifts off the surface whenever you work back over it. So this happened today while working on the man’s neck. The paint lifted off revealing two green blotchy holes (exposing the underpainting) in the highlighted area. Ha! I had to just stop and take a break. An hour later the surface was dry enough that I could stipple in a patch to match. This evened it all back up. No problem.

Nevertheless, the skin tone itself was a success story of indirect painting. I laid a green toned underpainting over the yellow ochre imprimatura. Then I mixed up three tints of venetian red (the Renaissance painters called that sinopia) to develop the form. When that work dried, I sponged in a yellow ochre glaze. Pop! Yummy flesh.

Another fun challenge was the sweater. I wanted to give it some movement as well as indicate the chiaroscuro of the body form beneath it. The underdrawing already indicated some movement, so I tried to let it speak though my strokes. After I was done working in the large forms and movements, I adjusted the colour with a sponged in glaze of cadmium yellow (bright!). That turned it from an almost dark-olive grey to a bright, delicious green. I’m pretty happy with the way it all turned out.

I might not want to eat that sweater but I wouldn’t mind a quick snuggle.

Overview of the entire project here. Technical write up of my use of acrylics for indirect painting in this project here.