The Painting of "Cajun Moon 3"
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The Painting of “Cajun Moon 3”
Merry Christmas Everyone!
In this video I am painting on a 36x36 gallery wrapped, Raw, Unprimed canvas. It’s been a long time, probably 5 years since I have painted on raw canvas. It’s a very different experience and takes a different approach than painting on a gessoed surface.
The biggest difference is that the canvas is rough, rather than being smoothed by the gesso. So it takes LOTS of water to get the paint to move around. You see me use the spray bottle often in the video, but it isn’t enough. I am dunking my brushes in water to have enough moisture to move the paint. Painting on raw canvas always reminds me of painting with watercolor on paper. There is a look and feel of watercolor, and the paint actually absorbs into the 100% archival cotton canvas, just as watercolor does on 100% cotton rag paper.
This painting utilizes an Analogous Color Combination (4 colors adjacent on the color wheel) of blue, blue-green, green and yellow-green. I just realized I didn’t really use any true green - oops.
I begin with a few scribbles using a Marabu Art Crayon. It helps to loosen me up a bit before I paint. I then start in the middle of the canvas with some middle value blue-greens and blues, drawing them randomly from my palette. Once I get a feel for the middle values, I started laying in some yellow-greens for my centers of interest, keeping them in a middle value for now.
Once my accents are established with the yellow-green I can begin putting in some dark and dark middle values to create more contrast near the accent color. Remember, my goal is to have my darkest dark values next to my lightest light values of my accent colors to create high contrast for my centers of interest.
I continue to add color and evaluate my shapes and values until I feel the painting is finished enough that I should stop. I may or may not do anything else to the painting, but I knew I needed to stop before going too far.
If you’ve never painted on raw canvas, you should definitely give it a try. It’s a completely different experience, but it may be one that you enjoy. Have fun with it!
P.S. After filming I took a black and white image of the painting to evaluate my value pattern. I determined that changes to the values needed to be made, so I made some modifications. You can Click Here to see the finished painting.
If you'd like to learn about abstract painting and making your own authentic work, then please join me for a painting workshop: (You can view a list of workshops HERE)
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As always, thanks for your support!
David
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