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18 x 24 initial drawing in with oils "Red's"
Bold Drawing In - "I Feel Naked"
One of the ways I often start a painting is to do the initial drawing in very bold, non-real, color. I was initially taught this approach from George Carpenter who would usually do his "block ins" with thinned Ultra Blue and Cad. Red Deep. He would draw with thin oil paint like a watercolor painting, but setting the patterns of warm and cool vs. light and dark before going back with thicker more localized color. On occasion, he would also do this type of wild laying in with thinned color of all types, but trying to meet the same goals.
The "out of door" landscape painter is bombarded with greens and blues for most of the year. If not careful, summer paintings brought indoors look too cold and lack luster. Laying in with warm colors is one of the best "tools" to make sure some warmth is in any finished painting. Some painters just start with a warm base of burnt sienna to "kill the white" of the canvas with a warm tone. I also know a few painters that also start just about every sky with yellow or orange to achieve the same goal even if they use a more direct color approach. This warm and wild base when painted over with the cool local colors will have little flecks of the warmth showing through the brush strokes and as the oil painting ages and becomes more translucent, the warm base will glow through even more.
Not sure how helpful this is or not, and I feel a little naked showing a picture at such an early stage, just thought I would share a little trick of the trade.
