Scott
Burdick
Oil Painting
Demonstration
So I just took my palette knife and scrapped and smooshed things together to reestablish the larger patterns and tie the colors and values back together. Painting is never easy, sometimes I'll go through this process over and over until I get it to work. Other times things work the first time. When you get into this kind of trouble, just remember to go back to the larger shapes before trying to correct the details.
And this time I was able to get the details to work together with relatively few brush strokes. I also reminded myself to keep referring to color sketch to keep in mind what it's relation to the unpainted areas should be.
So with the face mostly finished off, I start blocking in the larger shapes of the next areas. Below it, you can see the small color sketch I'm using as my guide.
Here's a close-up to show you some of the block-in of the right side of the painting.
Just covering up more of that white canvas!
In every area of the canvas I try and make the brushstrokes interesting in their own right. Some areas are thick, some thin and washy, some are done with a large brush, while others small or medium, or even with the palette knife. Variety is the key in everything. Think of counterpoint in music. The soft subtle areas will be much softer when next to bold, contrasty areas. This principle is true of almost every aspect of painting -- edges, color, technique, etc.
If you want to make a particular color pop, then the key is in making everything around it grayer so that that one bright area looks even brighter than it normally would. I was made especially conscious of this during a demo I recently did for a class in Scottsdale. I was doing a limited palette demo using Ivory Black, Yellow Ochre, Cad Red, and white. Most of the painting was very warm, so when I mixed some white with the black and put down a spot on the canvas, it looked so blue that everyone thought I'd added some cobalt blue to my palette for that one spot. I showed everyone the color on my palette, but it just didn't look as blue in that context so I actually took some of the color from there and dabbed it on the canvas to prove it was the same color.
At this point I set the painting aside for about a week while I worked on some other paintings. I purposely left some of the areas brighter and darker than I wanted so I could come back with some dry brush later.
And here's the final painting after I did some drybrush work on it the next week. I shot this and the rest of the close-ups with polorizing filters (on both the lights and the camera's lense) to get rid of the glare so you can see them a little better.
Here's a couple of close-ups of the final painting.
Think of everything as abstract patterns both when you look at the model and paint the shapes on your canvas. As strange as this section looks in isolation, if you get the shapes right, they'll read in context with the rest of the abstract shapes of you painting. I've always loved paintings that look like a wild mess up close but then magically resolve into a perfectly accurate representation when you stand back. I can admire certain abstract paintings for purely textural patterns and designs; as well as extremely photo-realistic paintings for the control and skill that went into their creation. But when you combine the two! That's what makes me drool...
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