Michael Pearce

I spent a satisfying morning adding the first layer of flesh colour into the skin of the two figures, then took out the green / brown ground with a Payne’s grey brushed on and pushed with a nasty old dried out house painting brush for some grassy texture.

 

 

 

The grisaille is now beneath a glaze of Burnt Sienna , then highlights of Titanium White. I lay the paint on fairly thickly with a brush, then scrape it away with the knife so that the texture and fragments of the earlier layers show through. I’ll use a rag to clean up unwanted bits, but I like to leave random textures alone when they serve the painting. It gives the illusion that the painting has appeared from a series of accidents.  

I had little time to paint today, but did manage to darken the rocks on the right hand side, and to figure out the position of the unfolded box on the left of the female in the foreground.

I spend a great deal of time simply looking at a painting while I make it, trying to figure out how it will create itself – where it wants to go. I mentioned yesterday that I needed a shape to lead the eye up to the male figure on the left, thinking then that it would probably be a rope, or a chain. The unfolded cube does the job beautifully though.

I decided to make the flying figure much smaller. He’ll be roughly where the armpit of the biggest figure in the sky hangs right now. 

Clue two. Four elements.  

Here’s the result of the morning’s work. I spent some time figuring out where the composition is going – I will place an object in the left side to bring the eye back up to the fellow on the left; if you look closely there’s a faint white line there which is my marker to suggest where I’d like this compositional device to go.

I made another change in the composition by adding a rock to the edge of the canvas beside the man. This closes that edge behind him so that the journey of the eye will tend to stay on the canvas instead of being led off to alternate adventures in another canvas somewhere. I think that I will probably add a foreground rock as well, upon which the woman will sit. This will made the action more contained and personal, and also make us feel as though we are flies of the wall at an event that we probably shouldn’t have seen.

 

 

I worked at defining the rocks by using a knife to scrape on some Van Dyke Brown over the Payne’s grey and loosely onto the rock surfaces, then adding some knifed Titanium White to it on the tops and left sides of the stones, where the light would hit them. I used the same brown to bring some texture into the female body.

At this stage of things it’s important to remember that further layers can lighten or darken the paint considerably, so things are not as they seem. Colours will also alter as glazes and opaque textures lay on top of what’s on the canvas already.

The large expanse of greenish brown on the left is finally irritating me enough that I think it’s going to have to get some attention very soon.

I want to express some ideas about the nature of trinity in this piece, a tricky proposition. Clue one: her fingers. 

A good days work.

Here’s where I left it this afternoon. Laying down the first layer of the head went well; some Nerdrum influence there, I think! By chance, the head ended up on top of the apron from the earlier figure, so I scraped the brush through the surface grey to allow some of that Raw Sienna to come through. This will work well later when it’s time to introduce some colour into the helmet / hat.

All pretty loose and rough, leaving lots of opportunity for textures to build, as shapes gradually get more definition to them. 

 

My plein air painter friend Rich Brimer, whose blog is here, came over to visit, so I got him to model for me so I can get the legs of the flying men rendered effectively. 

I worked on the figure, fixing the problems I mentioned before. She still needs some work, but the basics are there, and I can move ahead now. I emphasized some of the shadows and cracks in the rock with the left over Payne’s grey, and will make use of extra paint in this way as the painting progresses. 

Things will move a little more slowly now because Spring break is over and I must focus on the Art Department’s efforts to get our BFA program going. 

 

 

Here’s how the piece ended yesterday afternoon. I’m really happy with the composition now – I’m enjoying the curve of the rocks from the left, beginning with the man then sweeping across and down to the crouching woman, followed by the ellipse of the bodies in the air. Very satisfactory. Moving the crouching female figure was essential – she was too high and too far into the frame of the picture. Now she’ll live right on the edge of the image, so that double ellipse will come right off the canvas with her. I have to do some correction work to the figure: there are obvious problems with her back and arms, the hands are wrong and she has no head, of course. 

The paint’s getting super thick now, with all these reworkings. Some nice textures, but it’s pretty close to being TOO goopy for me. No more major changes! 

A quick technical note: do you see that white sky? It’s going to cause trouble later when I want to put colour onto it, because the paint won’t want to stick properly. I also like to use white to control reworking and reduce confusion, as you can see in the new foreground figure, but sometimes whites form a slippery surface that makes the next layer of paint bubbly. My friend Steve Aufhauser suggested I use a spray can of retouch damar varnish applied to the area I want to paint. The damar spray kills that bubble problem completely.

Steve literally grew up in his parents’ art supply store and there’s not a thing he doesn’t know about paint, so I ask him about any and all of my paint problems. He’s the guy who turned me onto Graham paint and their walnut alkyd medium when I was griping about turpentine.

The other goal of the day is to figure out where the big “Storm” painting is going. I think I may have worked it out by doing some sketching onto the canvas.

  

Here’s what it looked like at the beginning of the day. It’s four feet high by seven feet wide. I didn’t like the falling figure, so she’s half deleted now, but I’m not too thrilled with the crouched woman either, so it needs reworking.

 

Paul posed for this a long long time ago. He’ll be surprised to see it now. That’s the en grisaille layer. This painting marks the moment at which I switched over to en grisaille technique  from Caravaggio’s method of a first painting in burnt umber (actually I have always preferred Van Dyke Brown, it’s a warmer, richer colour).

  

I knew I wanted to have a group of figures being blown over, but I don’t want to lose the kneeling figure, so I’ll move her to the left and delete the middle of the three new figures in the air. She’ll be feeling the force of the energy the guy on the left is making, but remain unmoved by it. It’s the male and female duality. The figure beneath it all, falling backwards, is destined to disappear almost completely, although I might use her foot when I move the kneeling woman over.