Thursday, March 25, 2010

Day 4 of Sadie Valeri's Workshop

Most of my underpainting was dry upon arriving this morning but there was a small area of white that was still tacky.  In a perfect world/workshop, all of the paint should be completely dry before proceeding but one must move on.  The next step was to lay down a "couch."  Translated that means a mixture of two parts linseed oil to one part stand oil.  Remember, we are working lean to fat.  After brushing on a thin layer of this mixture, we used the 1500 grit sandpaper to sand down any bumps and to take off any particles of dust.  The finish was beautiful.

Next we mixed strings of the local color that we would be working with.  Everybody else was painting the wax paper which meant some variation of a warm or cool gray.  Not me!  I jumped right into painting the orange tangerine.  What was I thinking.  But with some trial and error and a little help from my instructor, I was painting with very little difficulty.  After the tangerine, I went on to the warm toned white stone pot.  That's as far as I got today and I'm hoping to finish this layer by tomorrow.

This way of working requires a lot of patience and a steady hand.  Although I don't think I will totally change my style of working to this method, I will most certainly use some of this new found knowledge.  Besides learning this method of working, the sidebar lessons were very informative and ones that I had never learned before.  I'm a happy camper!

1 comment:

  1. I have been following Sadie for sometime and her blog pointed me here. I was wondering, did you brush on your 'couch' mixture then sand the painting surface AND then proceed to lay down paint?? Thank you, I will become a new follower.

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