a multi-disciplinary dialog
Current Affairs at the Bar
Art and music for me combine magically. Over the years, my experience in meditation has also brought my mind closer to breathing music so that it can flow through me in my art. Now music is integral to my painting process. The art produced is the output at the end of each audio journey. The art is not the music or the journey; it is the visual experience resulting from the mixture of the two.
Mary Magdalene by Pietro Perugino, Pitti Palace in Florence, Italy. more… »
Many people think of underpainting as a working in monochrome — either in grays, or browns. Artists of the past like Jan van Eyck used very colorful underpaintings. The usefulness of this I see in my painting of grapes.
I was painting these grapes from some dark purple-blue grapes in my studio. I made the underpainting much more bright, and warm, than real grapes, as you can see in the picture above.
When the first layer of oil paint was dry, I began overpainting, putting darker shadows over the grapes to make the colors more realistic, darker and cooler, as you can see above.
Here I have gone further with overpainting in another session. Now the grapes have a realistic color, but the brightness of the underpainting color shows through and gives life to the colors. If I had started with dark gray grapes, instead of a colorful underpainting, the colors would be dead when I did the overpainting. This this picture is not quite finished in the cloth. Here is where I left it yesterday afternoon.
Any suggestions?
(detail requested by Steve)
Recently we looked at one of Hanneke van Oosterhout‘s finished still life paintings. There were a number of excellent critiques. The painting was already sold, however, so comments could have no further impact on that picture.
Now Hanneke is in the progress of making another still life. It is not yet finished, which means that your comments could help her make this painting better.
We can follow the painting’s development over several days. more… »
