Thursday, February 28, 2013

A Flower for my Daughter

Well here I am again.  I wanted to post the Tiare flower I just finished and to publicly thank Mr. Troy McKaskle for allowing me to use his photos as painting references.

You can click on the photo to see it larger.

I painted this in oils using a grisaille.  A grisaille is the entire painting done first in shades of gray (NOT 50 of them this time!  lol) then the painting is done in layers.  Each layer has to dry to the touch before another layer is added so it's quite a lengthy process since oil paint takes a while to dry.  The fat over lean principle must be observed to prevent cracking and the fatter, more oil medium added to each layer increases the drying time of each layer.  This process is supposed to add depth to the painting but I'm not sure I'd want to do another grisaille.  I want to paint a similar painting using the alla prima method and see if there's really a difference.

I'm pretty pleased with this especially since I haven't really painted in oils for a quarter of a century or so.  Even then, it was very sporadic as my husband couldn't stand the smell.  These oils are water soluble and don't require the smelly solvents nor do they smell in and of themselves.  Oh, happy day as I've always loved the look of oil paintings!

I haven't signed the painting yet as I want my daughter to choose whether she wants it in the landscape or portrait format.  I painted it thinking it should be a portrait format but when I took it off the easel and saw it in the landscape format, I really liked that better.  She'll see it this weekend then I'll sign it and maybe we can go look for frames if she likes it. 

OK, back into hibernation in the studio as I've been painting up a storm since I got my mojo back!

3 comments:

Sue Clinker said...

It looks fabulous both ways Jan so will be a tough choice for your daughter.

Will you make prints from this ... I'm sure they'd be very popular although I guess you might want to keep this specially for your daughter?

So pleased you've 'got your mojo back' about time we saw more of your work here ... keep at it!!

Jan said...

Thanks for stopping by, Sue. I'm thinking of signing up at Fine Art America and would possibly let them do prints from this since it makes distribution so much easier. I have another Tiare flower in the works from another photo source so will let her choose which one she likes and will possibly have prints made from the other one. Or, will do prints in the format she doesn't choose so she will still have an original. I'm sure she wouldn't care if prints were being made.

I just hope she likes it!

Studio at the Farm said...

Jan, thank you so much for your comments on the paper mache beasties. Making someone smile is THE BEST!!! :)
Kathryn