I’m taking a class called Techniques of the Masters, in which we’re painting a portrait of a lovely model with beautiful red hair using the techniques of verdaccio and glazing. It’s actually almost over – last week was class 7 of 8, and I’m very much enjoying it. Here’s what I’ve done so far:
We started off by preparing the panel. Ok, we cheated a bit here – in place of the wooden panels the masters used, we’re using masonite. But we got back on track by sizing it with rabbitskin glue, then giving it several coats of gesso – the real stuff, not that acrylic primer everyone thinks of when they hear the word “gesso”. Then we toned the panel with a lovely warm golden colour made of yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and a tiny bit of burnt umber. And finally, the preliminary underpainting in yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber and white. If you look closely, you can see where I had to go back in and correct her chin and some really bad hair I gave her!
I fell a bit behind when I was out of town for a week and missed a class. Now I’m working on the verdaccio, or “dead layer” – basically a value study in yellow ochre, mars black, oxide of chromium and white. In this photo, the verdaccio is about half finished; I need to finish her eyes and chest, and fine-tune some of the vaues. I think the most important lesson I’ve learned in this class is to check values constantly. Not that I wasn’t aware of the importance of value, but I discovered that my “eyeballed” values are often off a step or two when I check them with a value finder.
