Painting in Batches

August 10 2017 - Painting in Batches

OK! Its been so long! Two years+ of more interruptions than you can shake a wet brush at. BUT, I'm back. #!$%#$%. Sorry about the verbiage. Here's the program:  Batch painting. 

Recipe: Divide up an 18 by 24 inch Arches cold pressed 140 # sheet of watercolor paper in to 6 x 9 sections. Makes 8 paintings (that's cart before horse...it makes eight 6x9 rectangles). But before you divide it up, drop on a large pool of white gesso. Take a cardboard with a strong edge, butter knife that glob of gesso all over the paper. Forget about making it even. The more texture, the better. (See Bob Burridge for mastering this :-)

THEN toss down in this case Golden pyrrole Orange ( as in pyro, as in pyromaniac), or any color you like as an undercoating. Take a wet handiwipe crumpled up, and spread that beautiful orange all over.

Let dry. Pencil in bottle outlines, a horizon line or table edge. Pick your color scheme. Pick the direction of your light, accentuate the shadow areas. loosely lay down basic colors shapes, ( shadows highlights). Let dry. Repeat. 

In this second layer of painting  (and in the first for that matter) remember: your paint brush has two painting ends. You can gouge awesome little spontaneous marks  / scratches into your paper: what will show through is that awesome orange or any other color you but down first. Sweet. let it dry. 

Go play your guitar, piano, go for a walk, eat...return and let it strike you what these 8 individual paintings need: apply it. Seems close to finishing? Stop. Consider it done. Time for the next 8. That's one branch of the program here  folks :-) Here's what you get: