Subtle Underpainting

I had a very productive and varied day in the studio today, and feel very accomplished. Yay.

I started with my habit-in-development, a timed twenty minute sketch. It wasn’t particularly good, but the sketchbook is filling up.

Next up I prepped seven 6×8″ sheets ready to begin the 100 Day Challenge tomorrow. I decided having the first seven days of substrates ready would simplify fitting this challenge into my days. The sheets are all on blocks, mostly 300gsm watercolour paper. I prepped with one coat of fluid matt medium and two coats of gesso each. I’m aiming to all my mini paintings in oils, and I have started selecting some interesting references.

The other project I worked on today is going to be my response to a Let’s Face It class, but I’ve completely gone off on a tangent, so it will look absolutely nothing like the demo. It may end up looking absolutely like a dog’s dinner, but that’s part of the adventure.

I started out with a tonal study in my sketchbook. I was going to do a Notan study, but I ended up blocking the medium values as well as the lights and darks. It gave me some idea of where I want to go, and it also got me familiar with the shapes in the reference.

I had already primed a sheet for this class, so I stuck it up on the easel and slapped on an underpainting. As you can see from the accompanying photo, it’s not subtle, but oh it was fun.

She looks a bit like Wonderwoman, but that’s not really intentional, although I might go with that.

I won’t find out if my idea works unless I try it, and if it fails I’m fine with that too. I’ll be needing to stick with that emotion if I’m going to rise to my self-imposed 100 Day Challenge, because I absolutely know some of these are going to end up being, well, shite.

I’m going to try consistently posting them on Instagram and Bluesky to see how that goes, and obviously I’ll be blogging daily here. My hair-brained idea is that there will be these mini-paintings in additions to other daily art, but I know that some days that will be more of a challenge.

Doing a 100 Day Challenge feels very optimistic, given what’s going on with all the bams and billionaires. What will the world be like at the end????

Wild thoughts.

Til the morn,

Suzanne

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