When making a painting, only one thing counts: what you do next.

Walter Darby Bannard

In Part One on how to “Build a Painting”, I began where most building projects begin, at the ground level. I described my intention and motivation to complete a painting based on Odin’s Ravens, exploring notions of memory, thought and desire. Then I shared the techniques and materials that I used to transform a wood panel into a ready-to-use paint surface.

Now that the panel has dried to a bright white, and the surface has a subtle texture from using the roller, it’s time to paint the imprimatura, the first paint layer. This very thin underpainting is applied to the white canvas, almost like a stain. It provides a middle tone that helps establish value relationships from dark to light and it also provides a layer for light to enter the painting and refract back out. Traditionally, earth colors like sienna, umber and ochre are used.  However, in many of my landscape paintings, I use a cadmium red as the imprimatura; the warm orangy-red hue adds a complement to the greens of the land and the blue of the sky, making the painting luminous.

In the current painting, I hope to capture a similar glow. So onward with the cadmium red, thinned with Gamsol Solvent. This is only a thin layer; don’t be fooled by its intensity. (Oftentimes, I take a cloth to wipe off some of the paint.) There is something very visceral in covering the surface with RED and I always feel gleeful at this step!

In my mind, I can envision the black birds against a background of yellow sky in a soft misty gray Nordic forest. Before I paint the background, I sketch the forest so that I know approximately where to paint the various hues.

For this layer, I mix a string of grays, cadmium yellow, a touch of cobalt blue and white paint. In order to build a painting that is stable it is necessary to work the paint layers “fat over lean”, so I modified the paint with Gamsol and a small amount of linseed oil. And away I go!

Still visible is that cadmium red peeking through. Can you see it there, particularly at the bottom? At this point, I am enamored of the painting; it reminds me of one of the Great Lakes. I toy with the idea of completing another version of this as an abstracted lake-scape painting, even going so far as fetching another canvas from my storeroom. In the end, I remind myself to stay on track! Still, it haunts me.

Remember my idea to incorporate the words, Minnin, Hugin and Munin in the background? Using clear contact paper, I cut out the letters to use them as a mask and place them on the dried paint surface. I’m almost ready for the next layer.

Next Up: Painting the forest and punching up the yellow in the background.

This Week in the Studio

A gift comes my way in the form of this fantastic fish bone, complete with the tail still intact. I can already imagine how I am going to use it in one of my mixed media pieces. Thank you Leah for knowing I would want this treasure!

I attended the opening of the Michigan Fine Arts Competition at the Birmingham-Bloomfield Hills Art Center on Friday and was floored to discover that I had garnered the President’s Award. The funny thing is that in the past I had entered this particular piece of work in the annual exhibit and had the same artwork REJECTED! Go figure!