Rules and Play

My 100 Day Project continues. Alla prima painting feels intuitive to me, but it does have some general rules, guidelines, whatever you want to call them, and I am using this project to figure out what those rules mean in terms of how to put the paint down.

I mean I know the rules, and I know the theory, but the practise and the preferences are what I am figuring out. Yes, fat over lean, but what is my lean, and what is my fat? In other words, which mediums do I want to use, and how much do I need?

I have 95 more days to figure that out.

For today’s mini painting I wanted to use some of my fun colours, and try out the tube of dioxazine purple I may or may not have acquired recently. I had in mind a sketchbook page that I painted a while back, so I used that as a reference, and used caput mortuum, brilliant pink, quinacridone rose and the purple. I had a bit of unbleached titanium and titanium white too.

Technically this is a portrait, it’s just the subject is a bit less alive than the ones I have been doing. It gave me the freedom to play with paint without worrying about likeness, or flesh tones, and I tried to be loose, and intuitive, while also trying to stick to the alla prima technique, and also trying to have fun and be bold.

I could go back and flesh it out a bit, but I am happy with this for today’s oil practise.

I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist that one.

This was my second piece of work for the day as I am keeping going with my daily twenty minute sketch habit, and I’m definitely reducing procrastination, and increasing art time.

After the oil painting hour, I got started on a large canvas board, and some wild colours for a background. It’s large. I got the figure sketched on, and then a first coat blocking in the figure. The reference is one of Dinoopis’ Shapes, and I have intentionally exaggerated it in places.

A pretty good day of painting, really.

Til the morn,

Suzanne

376/400

• Medical Aid for Palestinians – DONATE