Michael Pearce

I’ve continued build up the shapes of the deeper layers of the grass using dark greens and browns, mostly in the same colours that I needed for the moss. It’s all quite general, making loose gestures toward the direction and shape of the grassy leaves and stems, but not overly concerned with detail. Next I used a lovely Olive Green – one of my favorite greens these days because of its incredible darkness that thins out to a rich deep glaze, just like Prussian Blue – and used it to get some greens into the landscape over the layer of Burnt Sienna I painted quite a long time ago.

Next, in order to get the foreground going, I used a Foundation White to paint the tangled stems and leaves of the grass, first with my largest script brush, then switching to a smaller size to make the leaves recede. It looks weirdly bright now, I’ll glaze colour over this when I finish the grass tomorrow, dropping into the landscape and creating some depth.

Now the textured surface has been completed with a glaze coat of white over the top of all the greys, blues and greens. Moss has started growing on the slab of stone in the darkened carved shapes and in the crack running across the surface, while close to the grass I’ve added a bit more mass of greens, iron oxide and whites, with some Yellow ochre here and there, abusing a bristle fan brush to build highlights by pushing the lightest paint into the surface and dragging it across the textured surface I created earlier.

At last I’ve made it back to the studio after a spectacularly busy week working on preparing a project for October. I’ve painted most of the sky with a glaze of Ceramic White, which is that lovely transparent white made by Holbein, then used Foundation White to create those denser areas of brightness. The delicate transparency of the Ceramic White makes some lovely soft colours emerge behind the clouds.

Regarding white paints, I have been hearing bad news from Michael Harding Paints, who are forced by new laws to stop production of their fabulous lead whites in tubes and instead fill caulking gun cartridges, which is ok if you use a lot of it, but would be a nuisance if you make small paintings. I’m getting the last twenty tubes in stock from my good friend Steve Aufhauser at his Continental Art Supply store.

Holbein’s Ceramic White continues to impress me. In a test of white paints exposed to bright Californian sunshine for six months this did extremely well, retaining its brightness and not cracking up at all; a huge improvement over all of the samples of Zinc white that we tried, which all cracked and colored. I will not use Zinc white again while I can get hold of this Ceramic White.

Adding highlights in Foundation White to the flesh that went down yesterday is making the figure start to come to life. I’ve extended the flesh across his belly and all the way down the lower arm. I’ll need to move the platform over so I can get to the top of the painting and work on the other arm. The painting’s going really fast!