Underdrawing over yellow ochre imprimatura for A Piece of Me #10.

A Piece of Me #10 oil on panel over pre-sculpted relief. 21 x 13.3 cm or 5 1/4 x 8 1/4 in.

This panel has been one of my favourites from the get-go. Back then I was pleasantly surprised by the serendipitous composition. Foreground, middle-ground and background all very well stated in a figurative sort of way. It felt like a comic strip panel from Archie and Jughead, evoking an untold story.

The call out for the panel then was oil over low sculpted relief. I prepared that relief with GOLDEN acrylic modelling paste, then primed it with a few layers of oil based (lead white) gesso and let that cure. (That curing turned out to be almost one year!). Not my  intention, just, what happened.

To begin I covered the whole panel with glaze, let it dry fifteen minutes and wiped it off. The surface was slightly tacky, receptive. Then I started painting, wet-in-wet. I began with the background primarily as gray values, progressing forward to the stronger, definitive, more colourful statements. Although I prefer to work with as limited a palette as possible, this particular panel required all the usual earth tones plus the main primary colours. I’ve included a photo of the palette below – just for fun. BTW: red and green are complimentary colors, which in their natural saturated state, are also of a similar value. So together they always create an interesting vibration in a painting. The two shirts of the two men then in this panel presents no exception.

The whole project took me about four to five hours to do. That’s longer than usual, but these panels with a more complex composition tend to require that. Nevertheless, I was happy to set my work aside and call it done when the dinner bell rang. Another curry for a hungry artist.

Palette for A Piece of Me #10