Sunday, February 10, 2013

Turtle Box

Box Turtles
2-1-13

So I finally got a chance to sit down and finish some more artwork. With all that has been going on lately, my production fell down to almost nothing. That and I'm starting to get a HUGE selection of unsold work (seriously, I'm running out of space to store stuff. Make me some offers on my gallery!) , so I'm starting to paint smaller pictures again. This one is pretty small...12x14. Nothing spectacular in the materials. Of course, I use top quality paints, but the canvas is standard. 

I'm sure you're familiar with my process by now if you follow my posts here on Blogger. I start by mixing my own raw sienna. I use this powdered pigment that I mix with either linseed oil or safflower oil, depending on how I want it to spread. I think I used linseed for the majority of this one. 




The basic concept was entirely unplanned. For some reason I decided to paint some turtles. I thought it would be funny to have some box turtles boxing, so there you have it.  In this image, I've added some hand mixed raw umber as well over the sienna.




More of the same. 




Here I've started adding texture by slapping on some extra thick areas of titanium white to be used later. This step takes at least 2 weeks to dry, so it helps to work on something else after you do this so it has enough time to dry before adding color. (The blue you see in this image is light reflecting on a raw umber section.




After the texture dries, in this step I've added in the light areas by shading them with alizarin crimson thinned with turpentine. (yes, I still us the toxic stuff. I'm old school)




This is the same as above, but I've added the shaded areas using thinned pthalo blue. 




...more white




...and more shading




Now I'm starting to add more premixed raw sienna (not the kind I mix myself) combined with cadmium orange. I use the premixed in this step because the premixed colors and hand mixed have different color saturation levels. If I tried to mix some premixed orange with hand mixed sienna, the orange would overpower the hand-mixed color too easily.




Here I've added some more colors. I've finished off much of the blue, and worked on some of the greens. I generally stick to various mixtures of sap green, naples yellow, white, and ivory black (not mars black)




Here is the finished painting. I seem to have skipped several steps, so let me sum up what you missed. The shinier brown areas are naples yellow light mixed 50/50 with linseed stand oil. The cloak on the left is various mixtures of a high-grade vermilion (not a hue, as you want the high color saturation). The turtles are the same as the other greens. The ropes and banner are the same colors I used in the robes of the guy on the left. The skin colors are...something. I don't remember which one I chose. Probably some Eurasian color or something. 

Anyway, this one ended up being a good slump buster. It was really fun, until the end where I kind of just finished it...spent way too long working on such a small piece. What can I say though, tons of stuff going on the last few months that killed my production level. Anyway, hope you enjoy it!

As always everything i have is for sale! See my art gallery for my available works. And check back in later for when I finish more stuff.

Piece out!