April 13, 2009

Easter's gone but unfinished painting remains

I didn't work too much on it yesterday after all, just a couple of layers, trying to add some texture to the skin from the beginning. The blueish blade that goes right to the upper right corner is bothering me a lot, I can't even remember when that became so obvious and I need to tone it down as soon as I start reworking the background, since I didn't want to darken that area too much I think I'll try to lift it and see what happens



the fact is that I spent a lot of time at the painting table yesterday but I wasted it doing swatches of a couple of colors that looked the same, W&N Rose Madder Alizarin and DS Quinacridone Burn Scarlet, so I thought the smart thing to do was to test both and see if the texture was different, if one mixed different from the other or if the color changed at different saturations of pigment... and nothing, both looked the same, then I checked the brands color charts and they happen to be the exact same pigment so what a waste of time! that'll show me to look for the charts BEFORE starting these tests next time.



I thought Rose Madder Alizarin had been removed from WN charts, in fact the one listed there is Rose Madder, maybe they reworked the formula and changed the name? The same goes for Vandyke Brown, I have the remains of a small tube that I got as a freebie from the art shopper years ago, he was giving them away because apparently WN was stopping the production, but now it is there in WN color chart as a superpermanent color so...

Anyway, I wasted some time and learned my lesson, maybe I manage to work on it a bit more before the weekend.

Links to the whole WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5, step 6

3 comments:

Ann Buckner said...

I see what you mean about the leaf in the corner. I can see a difference in the pigments too, at leas in the photo. The rose madder has more of a rose cast and the Quin. B. Orange leans more to the brown orange than the Quin. B. Scarlet. Now to see what you do next with the painting! :)

RH Carpenter said...

Teresa, it's never a waste of time to learn more about your colors - you just learned how to save money next time, too!
I'm loving the texture in the big daddy :)

Teresa Palomar Lois said...

You're right about those colors Ann, I've worked more on it but it's not finished, it'll have to wait since this week will be "painting for the swap" week.

Rhonda, I know it's not a waste but if only I'd gone to the group and checked those charts before starting to test the color I'd have saved half the time, this way I did it twice looking stubbornly for differences that obviously didn't exist lol. That reminds me I should do those swatches of every color you recomended at CW instead of being a lazy cow.