I’m really enjoying painting the marble wall, which is going to work nicely with the addition of two or three very light transparent glazes of warm Iron Oxide red and a blue to give it some vibration. I need to measure the position of the cracks between the slabs too, so I can line them [...]
This evening I made use of a short hour and a half to get started on the faces in the Empress painting, with good results. I’m pleased to get started with the work – it’s good to get back to painting the figure again after painting the skulls and bones of the Angel of Death [...]
The base white is down on the lower half of the Virtues painting, beginning the work in earnest. The gesture of the brush marks follows the contour of the wall and the slabs of marble that will be on the ground, while some of the warm orange colour of the sealer coat is allowed to [...]
I’ve been looking for sources for the two paintings, particularly the stonework of the foreground of the Virtues and the fabric of the dresses that will feature in it and the Empress. I’m very interested in Alma-Tadema’s work with marble in many of his paintings – he clearly knew he was onto a good thing, [...]
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope Love and the Maiden (detail). Here’s a detail of a fabulous example of late Victorian painting. She’s fantastic, isn’t she? I found her quite by accident at the Legion of Honor Gallery in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, in the company of a beautiful Bougereau and a lovely Alma-Tadema. There’s an [...]
I relined the blue drawing of the figures with graphite, having discovered that the pigment was not particularly strong once I started work with the base coat. The completed figures have been sealed under a wiped out layer of Iron Oxide Red, which means that soon I’ll be able to do some en grisaille work [...]
With the sealed canvas dry and ready for the first painting work to begin Joe, Jason, Devin and Casey started to put down the base en grisaille layer. Because my goal is to have the painting feel filled with the beauty and glory of the sunlight the work is particularly light, with little shadow. What [...]
We had a great day in the studio today, with the Virtues canvas completely sealed with Iron Oxide Red and ready to paint tomorrow after a good night’s drying. Casey did most of the work, seen in the right hand picture. The studio looks and feels remarkable different with this bright orange wall. I can’t wait [...]
My new colleague Bela Bacsi gave me a nice little pack of playing cards from Eastern Europe, including these lovely images of the four seasons which of course relate to the four paintings that I’ve been working on: Winter = In Between (perhaps I should call this “Hibernation”); Spring = Birth; Summer = Life; Autumn = Death. [...]
My students are going to keep blogs of their experience of working on the big painting with me; here are a couple of them: Joseph Clarkson Tuan “Jason” Nguyen I’ll post the others as they are made. I think it’s going to be interesting to see the narrative build from several different points of view.
