The Process of How Vic Paints with Oil.
I’m going to assume you already know what oil paint does with its many disadvantages and advantages, so I’ll skip the part about what brand of paint or the best mediums to use and all that and just get right to the process.
This is a short description of the process for the “Between Birth and Death” painting.
[click on the thumbnails to enlarge images]
First I set up my still lifes:
Then after a round of procrastination, not getting the preliminary drawings correct, and absolute loss of interest in the still life, I decided to move on and change the whole damn thing.
[No pictures of this boot crushing egg preliminary drawings…. sorry]
-I took the most interesting objects from my bedroom into my studio and set them up in a perfect composition.
After several failed attempts to find that “perfect composition,” I gave up and placed them into this one:
-Deciding to abandon the preliminary drawings step, I went ahead and painted my entire canvas black, gradually adding bits of white and working the values according to the light on the still lifes.
-So now I have a black and white painting. GREAT, SWEET, GOOD JOB VIC. And a thought came, “maybe I could just leave it like this…” but then I took a glimpse at the tubes of paint, formerly known as “Vic’s Money,” sitting around my paint box and I just couldn’t leave the painting in black and white. Plus! Upon closer look, the painting, left in black and white, could make the cover of YAWN…my fictional magazine of boring stuff.
I added yellow, the ochre kind, to my palette and worked on the background drop cloth and the gas mask.
Due to the bitter cold weather outside and the lack of heat in my studio, I stopped painting when I couldn’t keep the brush I was using steady anymore. I left the painting for another day.
There are artists I personally know (and I’m not going to drop any names), who would look at this painting in this stage and say to me,
“You know what, Vic? This thing’s finished! This looks a lot more interesting than if you paint the entire thing in color! It’s a statement! The gas mask and background are the only ones in color because the others are just distractions. The skull, which symbolizes death, and the egg, which symbolizes birth, doesn’t matter as much as the gas mask, which symbolizes life as a struggle and survival. And…uh…the background drop cloth matters too because…it’s um…. it—it just matters! Anyways, go up to Mr.” Rich Art Collector” and tell them THAT IS EXACTLY WHY you decided to leave the skull and the egg in black and white.”
And then there are other artists I personally know (still not dropping any names), who would look at this painting in this stage and say to me,
“Uh, looks like shit.”
There are more of you in the latter than the former and I’d have to agree with the majority.
So I began working on the skull’s color on the next session.
I added some more yellow ochre and a bit of red of the cadmium kind to my black and white palette.
Maybe it was because of the bitter cold weather (I could actually see my breath while I paint), or maybe it was because I underestimated the still life, whatever the reason was, painting that damn egg was frustrating the crap out of me. It’s a simple geometric shape but maybe that’s why it pissed me off so bad, I just couldn’t get this simple thing right.
When I finally executed something I was happy with. I added some more details on the mask and finished the painting with a final glaze.
I go to sleep with a sense of accomplishment.
The End.
[...] You can paint directly on the canvas like the way I described in an old blog post called, ” Painting Process (Warning: Contains NO educational value)” –Don’t let the “Contains NO educational value” fool you, it contains a [...]