The Painting of "Conversation 15"
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Te Painting of “Conversation 15”
In this week’s painting demonstration I am revisiting a series called “Conversation” that I started 5 or 6 years ago. I did 14 of them for an exhibition. I pulled one out the other day to hang on a wall in my house remembered what fun they were to paint, and thought it would be fun to do another piece in the series.
The concept for the series was to put down some dark value shapes in black (for the original series), then let it dry, come back and determine how much of the shapes to leave, how many to cover, or how many to leave visible, but muted in some way. The idea is you are constantly having a Conversation with the painting as you are painting it, hence the series name.
The previous two demo videos I did I did not use a music overlay, letting the sounds of the studio come through. Many people said they liked that approach, so I used a similar approach here. I am listening to music through my ear phones so I can monetize the video with no music copyright claims.
Here are the colors I am using (all are Golden Heavy Body Acrylic Paint):
Benzimidazolone Yellow Light
Pyrrole Orange
Titan Buff
Neutral Gray 6
Light Phthalo Blue
Light Ultramarine Blue
Titan Green Pale
Cobalt Turquoise
Anthraquinone Blue (mixed with Mars Black) I will refer to this as Indigo Blue
Titanium White
I start by making some initial loose shapes with the Indigo Blue mixed with a small amount of Titanium White, then wait an hour or so for the paint to dry. I am using Analogous Color Combination of blue, blue-green, green and yellow-green. The blue is the dominant color, the blue-green is non-dominant and the green and yellow-green act as my accent colors (however, I really just used the yellow-green).
I was using three new paint colors and was eager to try them out on this painting: Light Phthalo Blue, Light Ultramarine Blue and Titan Green Pale. While I’m waiting for the paint to dry, I start mixing paint on the palette. I begin by mixing the Pyrrole orange into all the blues and greens to neutralize the colors. I mix Benz Yellow Light into the muted Titan Green Pale mixture to make my yellow-green. I then add a little Titanium White to all the mixtures to lighten the value as needed. I want this to be primarily a muted, lighter value (high key) painting, except for the dark value Indigo Blue.
I begin the painting with a little yellow-green on the left accent area and then continue to add, at random, various blues and greens from the palette to get the surface covered. I immediately covered some of the dark value shape, to free up more “space” in the middle of the painting. Once everything is covered, I abandon my large brushes in favor of a smaller, long handled natural bristle brush. I then let the brush dance across the surface adding paint and texture along the way. This is such a fun way to paint - and the brushwork on the finished painting adds lots of visual interest.
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David
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