Two new Paintings in progress
I wrote that I would never again work on more than one painting at once and here I am at it again – But this time I’m doing well; I’m on a roll – Plus I’ve got nothing else to do during the holidays. That’s just perfect, that’s just what I wanted for Christmas. No family coming over, no guests (save for a jam session last Friday), no parties to attend to and all the time I want to paint. I try to go to bed early so I get up as early as possible to benefit of as much natural daylight as possible since there isn’t a lot of that around this time of year.
was tired of doing green, green, green *Ugh!* bored me to death and it felt kind of weird to paint flowers in the middle of winter and I picked-up two new paintings. The first one is “Les Patineurs” (the skaters) which I picked up from where I have left it last spring – I’m experimenting impasto for the first time with Les Patineurs. It features a typical winter scene; people ice skating on the Old Port basin in front of Bonsecours Market in Old Montreal – So far only the top part is done; the sky, the buildings in the far back, Montreal city hall (for those that don’t know that’s the green roofed building on the far left) and the Bonsecour Market (central building with the beige dome) – Only approximate flat colours have been applied on the ice, the skaters and the snow – I’m working from pictures taken 2 winters ago and for some reason I don’t understand, there is only one tree on the pictures that has snow on its branches; On the painting I decided to put snow on all the trees… it’s prettier.The other painting I’m working on is a fresh new one. I got the idea when shopping for Christmas gifts. I saw those poinsettias for sale and I couldn’t resist. The vibrant red leaves appealed to me too much (By the way I named my poinsettia “Jules” it suits him well I think) I had just bought a bottle of Porto and knew I had some other bottle of wine over at my place that would go well with Jules the poinsettia – “So what’s missing?” I thought… Oh I know… nuts!!! So I went to the grocery store and bought nuts. As soon as I got home I fetched the old nutcracker that’s been at the bottom of the junk drawer for ages and at last, the final touch: a small oil lamp that was given to me several Christmases ago – Yeah I know, it’s very “Christmassy” – So what? At least next year folks won’t be able to say that I’ve got no real Christmas Creeting cards ;-)
That painting which I don’t know what I’m going to call yet has quite a few challenges: The clear transparent glass of the oil lamp and its flame. Fire, I’ve never done in oil before. As for the clear transparent glass, I’ve done that only once when I was 9 years old, I think. It was not really good. It is not quite like the glass of bottles which is often dark and pretty opaque – Whichever, I been working on that painting for the last 3 days and it is coming nicely – I did the clear glass on today and I think I’m satisfied. As you can see from the pictures I’ve started the poinsettia painting with a medium dark reddish-brown ground colour – This will help create a dramatic chiaroscuro effect – I did the sketch on a piece of paper of the same size as the canvas, then rubbed some charcoal on its backside and traced over the lines to transfer onto the canvas. First thing I painted were the dark negative spaces behind the poinsettia’s foliage with a mixture of Van Dyke brown, Carmin red and a tad of yellow ochre to lighten it a little bit as I don’t want it to be too dark yet. I’ll darken it along the way as needed. I want to work these dark spaces wet on wet along with the poinsettias leaves to successfully lose their edges into the darkness.
