Week 5: That Took WAY Longer Than I Wanted It To

A Contrast to Last Week, Tediousness, and Burnout

Lightwashing

This week, my main goal was to experiment with Sfumato Painting, a method of smooth glazing and layering used most notably in da Vinci's "Mona Lisa". I was a little apprehensive going into this process since I usually shy away from obsessively blending out paint for fear of over-combining the colors and over working the paint. To combat this, I followed Da Vinci's process of working in layers. I started out with turpentoid as paint thinner (I ran out of linseed oil), but this soon proved to be a mistake, for the turpentoid quickly began to pull off the canvas. It is pretty evident in the picture at right (the paint appears see-through).

Palette... It Doesn't Change Much

-alizarin crimson

-cad. red

-cad. yellow

-ultramarine blue

-yellow ochre

-titanium white

-ivory black (background only)

-turpentine, linseed oil (thick for detail), linseed oil (thin for glazing)

An Excursion to A.C. Moore

After the first light wash it was evident that the turpentoid would not be sufficient for a process with so many layers. I reluctantly drove to A.C. Moore to pick up some linseed oil. Linseed oil is smoother and thicker so it blends the paint more easily without thinning out and pulling. I wasn't aware that linseed oil came in so many varieties, though, before I looked through the painting aisle. I ended up picking up some thicker oil for the detail work and top layers and opted for a thinner, more "quick-dry" oil for the base layers and major tone blending. These ended up working out much better than turpentoid which serves as more of a paint dissolver than a medium thinner. overall, I'm glad that I picked them up, but the long trip to A.C. Moore was quite the excursion.

The "Almost There" Struggle

This is about where I got completely stuck, part of the reason that this painting ended up over-flowing into week six. I was incredibly disappointed about how this piece was turning out and I was finding ti extraordinarily difficult to find the drive and discipline to finish the piece. I think it is important to work through works like this, because even if the product wasn't aesthetically what I wanted, it forces me to accept failure and see a comprehensive example of the mistakes I made.

I'm Not the Background Queen... I Get It.

The background makes the painting look like I painted over a massive smashed bumble bee. Ok, so that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you must admit that it certainly doesn't look good. I think that this background was kinda of elaborate scheme to get the piece over with so that I could chuck it off a building. (No, I didn't end up doing this, though I'm still tempted). Long story short, I really detest this background. It doesn't fit the aesthetic of the piece as a whole nor does fit the sfumato style that I was trying to achieve.

I mentioned in a previous blog post that I wanted to try to incorporate more detailed backgrounds into my pieces. this piece is certainly not an example of that, though my goal still stands. Going forward, there is still a lot that I have not tried within the realm of painting and I couldn't be more ambitious to try going forward.

Semi-Failure

This was definitely not my finest work. Honestly, this is the first piece of senior project that I have been incredibly disappointed with. Looking back on it, her left eye turned out alright but the rest of the piece was kind of a mess. The nose lacks definition and the lips are a flat-out disaster. The skin tones ended up blending almost too well. By this, I mean to say that though the skin looks nice and smooth, it lacks color-complexity. additionally, this "over-blendedness" contrasts negatively with the under-blended eyes relative to the ideal product of sfumato painting. Also with the failures in this painting: the eyebrows. They turned out incredibly uneven and don't compliment or frame the face in the way that I would have liked. I really didn't achieve the daintiness that Da Vinci is so famous for to say the least. And, like I said previously, the background is absolute trash. Long story short, there are very few things that I feel I did well on this piece. I demand a rematch!! Though this happens to every artist, it still really does feel awful to hate one of your own artworks with such a fervent passion... probably why it is rumored that Da Vinci burned hundreds of his own sketches!

Would I Do It Again?

I would definitely try this process again despite this week's failure. I have nothing but respect for the intricacy and the difficulty of this process and I would want nothing more than to achieve something close to it in my own work. Additionally, I feel that it is a significant element of painting. It flips my process up-side-down and forces me to think outside of the one or two layer works that I usually complete. It requires a deliberateness that I hope to master not only in sfumato painting but also in all of the artworks that I produce.

Process Video

I'm not super proud of this piece but nonetheless here is the process video. It started out okay but by the end I got pretty tired of it and started to hate the portions that I got stuck on. But, I hope you enjoy anyway even though it is for certain not perfect.

Housekeeping: The Last Time!

This being my last paint piece of senior project (and in MHS), it was time to clean up the brushes I had been neglecting since April Break. I took approximately three hours and half a tub of brush soap to sufficiently restore all of the brushes. It's tedious but like I've said in previous posts, it's incredibly important for me to respect the materials I have such a privilege to use. I worked on the table for a white, too, for it took about thirty minutes and a quarter of a container of clorox wipes to remove the majority of the tack oil paint that I had built up over the course of senior project.

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