The light today, for once this winter, is good.
I worked on these two paintings this morning. I finished (I think) the small (20″ x 24″), gray study. I wrote about this painting before. It is a study for a larger treatment. I finished the to-scale drawing on a sheet of paper then transferred it to the canvas. I describe the method in the linked post. It’s a method I use for watercolors. I plan a 40″ x 50″ painting of the same design.
The lower painting is painted thickly and loosely. It still needs a session or two. It’s on linen which, I hate to admit, I prefer to cotton. [sigh] Linen, as all painters know, is MUCH more expensive than cotton canvas. Not only that, I’m out of linen but I still have a huge roll of cotton duck.
I took another photo of the studio and was struck by the light streaming through the blinds. You can see the 40″ x 50″ gray canvas in the background. The drawing is almost done. It shows my usual method: drawing with pencil fixed with ink. After the drawing is finished, I sometimes start painting directly on the gray ground.
Recently I’ve taken to passing another thin layer of gray paint over the finished drawing before starting to paint. The extra paint layer obscures the drawing. I don’t mind the drawing showing through but when the drawing is complicated and filled with a lot of smaller than life-size figures, the drawing can be distracting. Another option is to draw on the white gesso and then apply the (thick) gray ground over the drawing.