This Giant Canvas Intimidates Me
Letting go of perfectionism, to layer in progress.
Last week, I told you about how I created the reference image for this painting. It was a mixture of editing a photo I had taken and some 3D modelling to get the light effects I wanted.
I painting over the old underpainting with the adjusted composition and got the first layer of the new underpainting on.
I feel glad it's in the canvas. I'm so intimidated by this painting, so every time I take a step forward with it, I feel like I've accomplished something difficult.
This large canvas has been sitting in my living room, with just a base layer of colour on it for months, taunting me. I'm daunted by it because it's a piece of "fine art," and I feel like it needs to be perfect and amazing, and I doubt that I can do that. But I'm trying to turn that mindset around into one of learning and experimenting.
Working on this layer has taught me some things about how I want to approach future work.
What I've learned so far is that I want the underlying colour closer to my final image idea. I'm already tempted to adjust the values on the canvas, but it feels like a waste since I'll be covering this up with the next layer of underpainting.
In the future I need to start with a coloured ground that matches the mid-tone of my final image. That way I can leave parts of the underpainting exposed and only fully render the areas I want to draw attention to.
But for now, this is where I leave it. Next week, there are a few ways I can move forward with this:
Build up the lights with cadmium red, white, and dark blue.
Apply a light wash in the mid-tone colour I want, then rebuild darks and add lights.
Or treat this as a traditional underpainting and add lights using a lighter blue.
Thanks for reading this short update, I appreciate you following along.