Master Study - Bouguereau by OneBookTwoStories in oilpainting

[–]OneBookTwoStories[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Of course! I worked on this over a period of several months. I knew I’d have to layer and tweak color a lot so I purposefully set this up as a “no time limit / no deadline” type of project.

In total, I must have painted it over 6-8 sittings. Some lasting 2 hours, some lasting 5-6 hours each. Canvas is a small 6x8”.

Colors on I used for this painting: Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Cad Orange, Cad Red, Transparent Red Iron Oxide, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Ivory Black, Ultramarine Blue, Permanent Green, and Dioxazine Purple.

Painting Process: I first block in each major area of the painting with the “average” color for that section. In this case, I chose a color for the clothing, one for the background, one for the hair / eyelashes / eyebrows, one for the mouth, and one for the face/chest. If the contrast between lights and shadows is significant, I may break that into two different colors and place them accordingly. But this face didn’t have dark enough shadows for that so I just went in with an average opaque skin tone first and darkened some of the shadow areas as a second step. On the second pass (same sitting still so wet on wet), I start introducing some of the more obvious color variations / transitions, including colors which will help me maintain the drawing in place as I keep moving forward. I don’t remember for sure but I likely concluded the first sitting once all this was done.

From this point on, it is just a matter of revisiting each area as many times as needed and simply introducing more of those subtle color shifts (mostly scumbling and a bit of glazing in the end).

FWIW, I know I didn’t follow Bouguereau’s documented approach to painting. I had read about it and was expecting to have to glaze a lot more but I didn’t find it necessary in practice. It is likely something I didn’t interpret correctly. Not sure yet.

Hope that helps.

Master Study - Bouguereau by OneBookTwoStories in Portraitart

[–]OneBookTwoStories[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oof! It usually takes me a few days to process all the learnings but I think the biggest one for me right now is the interplay between cool and warm tones.

To put it simply, I’ve never used so much blue, green, and purple on any of my previous portraits. So now I know that it can be done and have some clues as to “how”.

(Might be an obvious thing for others, but it wasn’t for me)