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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Swan Painting -- Further Progress

Further progress shot of my latest oil painting, showing the underpainting, and the start of the next layers on the top left and bottom right. I am avoiding using extremely dark black colours in the reeds for now. I want to see how the colours that I am using here look and see how the tones work together, before darkening any necessary areas. I am using a number of blues, cobalt, prussian and cerulean to make the blue water, and mixing them with lemon and cadmium yellow light to achieve the various greens. I have used some paynes grey, but not a lot. Titanium white is plentiful in the colour mixes. I also used some cadmium yellow with cobalt blue to mix darker greens.
I am hoping that if I put in the extra effort on this painting I can get it to a stage where, without it looking overworked, it should stand as one of the best I have done in the last two years. To do this I am concentrating on focusing while applying each brushstroke, instead of just painting lots of brushstrokes without really thinking. I am trying hard to concentrate and "think" before applying any paint, asking myself is it the right shade, location and how will it fit in.
If I have time I want to go to the National Gallery, here in Dublin, to get a look at other artists work and see if I can learn anything from their work. Hope I can do that soon. That's it for today, and check back as always for the next update. -- Jim

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