Valis

Last week I started working on the second painting in the series that I started with Tone Float and The Pleasure of Deceit. The first photograph shows it with just the gouache painted in for the first time and the second photograph shows it with the grey painted in. The second photograph could almost be used for digital purposes since it looks finished but it’s only a third of the way done at this point. The last photograph shows what it looks like from the side as I start applying the second layer; if it’s glossy than I know that it has already been painted.  

Tone Float

I finished the first new painting from the series based on the gouache on paper series that started with the painting The Pleasure of Deceit. For this painting I started by first building the panels using 1/4″ hardwood and 1″x3″‘s and then stretching canvas over them. After priming it I projected the original sketch onto the canvas to mark my corners and then finished drawing it in using a ruler and pencil. I made the lines 3/8″ thick to try and keep the proportions of the original gouache paintings correct; I don’t want the lines to be too thick or too chunky. After I finished with the drawing I painted the orange lines in using yellow (orange) gouache followed by gray acrylic latex paint. The grey paint is actually house paint left over from one of the walls in the house but the original can froze out in the garage this winter so hopefully this new can is close to the original. After the whole painting had been painted once I painted the orange lines again to fill in any left over white areas on the border where the grey and the orange meet. I then painted all of the grey again to try and flatten out the blotchiness of the surface and to continue straitening out the lines. After I finished the second coat of grey I used a sort of scumbling technique using a very coarse brush and a very thinned layer of grey paint to blend the edges around the orange lines. One of the nice things about the non-Acryla gouache paints is that they can be re-activated by adding water to them which makes them easy for blending. I’ve used this technique many times on other paintings like Burning From the Inside and From Safety To Where….? and prefer its blurry organic effect to my earlier hard-edged lines like those in Journey Into the Realm of Reason. The thing is, digitally the difference is mostly imperceivable but I’ll continue to do it anyway and hope that one day I’ll be able to actually exhibit them somewhere so that they can be viewed up close and personal. After scumbling all of my edges and retouching them I painted my last layer of orange and then repainted the grey a third time to really solidify it.

Here is a photo of the initial sketch on the canvas and the final painting leaned up against my fireplace. I’m going to wait until I’ve finished all 4 paintings before I try and photograph them professionally.