Month: March 2012

I had an idea, a dream of a painting I could see clearly in my mind.  A little Pyr puppy who was woken up at night by the light of the full moon and decided to play.  I picked up my brush and realized I had no idea on how to paint light.  Light is hard.  So I read up on glazing.  That is what the great painter Vermeer used and many other great Masters to show light and make their paintings glow.  Me, I’m starting with the basics.

First take a large serving of patience.  Glazing involves using transparent paints and a special alkyd medium (I used walnut alkyd oil) to dilute the paint.  Then after putting a thin light layer, you must let that layer dry before you can do anything else!  That’s right….a few brushstrokes and ..come back tomorrow.  Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock sigh.

So in the painting below I only used red, yellow, blue and white.   I wanted the hand to look like ghostly moonlight.  First I painted the hand white and the red bar at one side and the top stripe of yellow.  Then I painted the square over the hand a dilute blue and then a dilute red and I got purple.   Then I painted the stripes at the side.   Then I pained the hand a light yellow (my original yellow mixed with a little white).  Of course I had to let everything dry in between and then the red heart and the blue paw.  Where the paw overlaps the red it is a dark purple, where it over laps the yellow hand it is blue.  The same with the other colors.  The paint that is used is classified as transparent or semi-transparent and it is diluted with walnut alkyd oil medium rather than linseed oil or turpentine.

I like to paint wet over wet where you paint with layers of wet paint over other layers of wet paint.  Sometimes I wait to let a layer dry so I can have a pure color and it won’t mix with the under-layers of paint.

But glazing you have to let each layer dry.  But it is worth it.  The next layer you put on, like putting one pane of stained glass over another, is blended by your eye to give you a new color, and more depth and luminosity.  You really need to see the result with your eye on the canvas because it doesn’t photograph well. 

So I did two somewhat abstract designs, Hearts and Paws, and Hands, Hearts, and Paws.   I used only three colors, red, blue, yellow and white.   Any other colors you observe is what you eye sees after one layer of one color is laid over the dry layer of another color. 

So finally, I had the technique to do moonlight.

And here is my little Pyr at Moonlight Play.

 I am now working on the largest canvas I have ever used.  It is 18 inches by 24 inches.  It has a theme again of Pyrs in moonlight.  I hope to make the moonlight in the next one a little less intense yellow and make it look a little more like real light rather than a “beam me up Scotty” Star Trek beam.   Getting better takes practice and trying new things.  But it’s fun to branch out.