I went to Reno yesterday for the sole purpose of getting some canvas, paints, and brushes at the art store. I just didn’t feel like waiting for supplies to show up in the mail, and I really wanted to get some painting practice in with skin tones.
The trip was fun, although the art store supplies were much more expensive than ordering online.
Today I started a practice painting from scratch using a model photo from the PROKO drawing course. I sketched directly on the canvas using pastel with a palette knife – a technique I learned from Cesar Santos. When I was content with the rough sketch, I solidified the lines with a charcoal pencil and some spray fix. Then I mixed up some skin tones with differing values and temperatures and started the dead color stage, which is just a blocky rough-in of color to help begin establishing value and temperature.
I think I spent about 6 hours on this today. Now I let it dry and begin the next phase, which is called First Painting. I’ll be busy all day tomorrow so I probably won’t be able to work on it again until Saturday. My goal with this project is to help me establish a painting process and routine that I can use for my future works. I have a big professional piece that I want to start soon, but I don’t want to begin until I feel confident with my process, and right now I am still weak in many areas – which I learned from my Seattle trip. So I hope to strengthen those areas with this practice round.
