Monday, March 14, 2011

Inspirations, step 5


The underpainting

Using terra rosa and ultramarine blue, I worked first on the drapery. Then the books and the violin. For some subtle color changes, I added yellow ochre and the Torrit Grey.

Some of the drawing is lost because the background color needs to overlap the objects. The ideal procedure is to finish the background first and then do the items on top of it. But it never seems to happen that way because I like to have soft edges between the objects and the background.

Since much of this painting is a warm reddish brown, I may continue the painting using the Zorn palette of black, cadmium red light, yellow ochre and white. I can get such a wide variety of shades, tints and colors with that limited palette for a wonderful harmonious painting. Another advantage to this palette, is that it's so easy to re-mix a color, since there are so few options.

See below for my Zorn palette.

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