The next step.... painting Pop's House

The painting begins.....

While I danced around the idea of putting paint on a perfectly good canvas, I squeezed a few colours on my palette.  The joke about the white canvas is that for any artist, the best painting is the one they will do next and a perfect work of art is the plain canvas before anything has been done!

Anyone who paints, beginner or old pro, the emotions are always the same when starting a painting.

 Above is a snapshot of my palette for the "under-painting."  All I need are very few colors.  There is no white on the palette.  Adding white early in a painting or too much at anytime will make the colour very "chalky."  Using a 3/4" brush and a one inch natural bristle brush I began to mix some of the tube colours with turp and medium to a watercolour consistency.  

You can see how thin they were in the photo.  

I like the look of the simple "under-painting" and many times it can be more exciting in freshness and emotional brush strokes than the finished work because the artist is more relaxed and unguarded.  There is a lesson here!  

From this point, I will begin to paint the things the farthest from me... the sky and moving closer and close in, I will complete the painting making the grass and shadows near the bottom of the canvas the last thing to paint... in essence.  

If you ever us this technique, you will be amazed at how much of the "under painting" actually becomes part of the finished work.  It is great because it keep us from becoming too fussy with details in areas that really don't matter as long as they are covered in paint.  Like life, it is sometime the things we do not do that make life and art good.  

Oh yes, I have a new colour on my palette this time...

Sennelier's "Orange de Chine"

or

"Chinese Orange"

It s very bright and intense, but for an underpainting, it will add a warmth that will give life to the old tin and unpainted house. 

The nest important step in any painting is to spend time with the canvas without painting to give yourself time to get acquainted. 

The magic happens when the painting tells you what should happen next.

Relax and just have fun.