Art de jour #2

In part one of this article I wrote about one-a-day painting as a means for simplifying the art-making process, and sharpening both technical and observational skills. In this part I'll focus on how painting-a-day can also help painters to engage their audience. If, like Van Gogh, you can take a simple or even mundane object (like a chess piece) and -- through a few carefully placed dabs of paint -- capture the attention of a viewer.

One of the goals I set for myself was to forego the use of sable brushes (which I have a great fondness for) and develop an allusion to detail solely through a few flicks of a bristle flat, while at the same time imparting a very appealing impasto texture to the painting's surface.

Hard, smoothly polished metal surfaces and slick pieces of varnished wood always catch my eye -- so I painted them.

Using a very traditional technique, underpainting is done using earth tones and darker pigments -- which tend to absorb less linseed oil and therefor dry more rapidly.  

We had a transformer that failed, regular as clockwork, every 6 months (often plunging our little cul-de-sac into the pre-grid era for up to three days at a time) -- so I painted it. 

Underpainting was thinned with solvent (which is more volatile than oil and evaporates quickly). For health and safety reasons I choose odorless mineral spirits over turpentine.

Ever since I was a youngster I've been both fascinated with the design of the pecan's shell, and stymied by a desire to come up with something productive to do with it after extracting the nut within -- so I turned it into the subject of a painting.

Having laid down the darkest darks I gradually move toward the lightest, most oil-rich, and slowest drying colors.

While cooking a pasta primavera one day I was struct by how challenging it might be to paint my little olive oil jar against the equally white counter -- so I did a white-on-white study.

At the intermediate stage I focus on finding and conveying areas of reflected color. (The color of the ground plane -- table, counter top, etc. -- can often be seen reflected in the subject's shadows.) 

During a family outing to Shenandoah National Park I was smitten by my young son's gentle smile -- so I endeavored to capture it. 

Once the underpainting has "set up" and begins to feel slightly tacky to the touch I switch to oil medium to achieve a buttery consistency in the next layer of paint being applied. (My favorite medium is Gamblin's Galkyd, which dries rapidly and produces a flexible, non-yellowing paint film.)

The constant flux and complexity of birds and water haunt me -- so I did a color contrast study of one of our winter neighbors.

Once the underpainting has "set up" and begins to feel slightly tacky to the touch I switch to oil medium to achieve a buttery consistency in the next layer of paint being applied. (My favorite medium is Gamblin's Galkyd, which dries rapidly and produces a flexible, non-yellowing paint film.)

My wife is the most fascinating and intriguing person I've ever met -- so I've drawn her, and sketched her, and painted several one-a-days of her.

Finally, I identify the purest, brightest points of highlight and I lay them in as tiny areas of impasto "icing on the cake" -- and sign my initials. Done!

Note: to view step-by-step still image demos of the last three images in this week's series, please klick on the underlined hyperlinks. Or, alternately, you might enjoy the easy listening soundtrack while watching the video below.

Happy painting!