The Missing Saucer

 

Click Here to Bid (6x6in. - OIL - starts at $100)

Someone asked a while back if I would occasionally show a photo of my setup - what I'm painting, IRL. So here's this one, as best as I could manage, looking down into my shadowbox. I painted it from life, not from the photo.

And since I was taking photos, I decided to also show you a trick I've learned. If you've read my book or watched any of my tutorials, you know I generally start with a ground, draw my composition with burnt umber, and then wipe it a bit with a paper towel so that only the ghost of the drawing remains. Well, I realized one day that I could dip a brush in OMS (Gamsol), scrub that onto my panel where my lightest lights live, and then squeegee* that off, thus removing most of the brown, but only where I scrubbed. This does a few things for me:

1. Gives me something akin to a value study (even more so if I then paint in some darks with the drawing color, which I didn't do this time).

2. Allows me to further adjust shapes, which I sometimes need because the drawing line can sometimes get fat and weird...

3. Removes even more of the brown paint so that  "delicate" or "vulnerable" colors (like yellow or other light colors) go down without mixing with the brown and getting muddy.

NOTE: When I dip into the OMS, I then wipe most of it off onto a paper towel except just a little bit. Otherwise it drips down my panel when I go to scrub it in.

*The squeegee in the picture is the Princeton Catalyst Wedge, Shape 6. But there are other kinds.

Check out my Instagram page for process photos of the whole painting.