Archive: Studio
October 2022
For larger paintings, I lay out butcher paper, lean the painting against the wall, and sit on the ground to paint it. When painting, if I need to wipe off excess paint or wipe my brush clean, I’ll wipe it on the paper. By the time a painting is complete, the paper is its own painting, with a rainbow mess of brushstrokes going rapidly in all different directions.
November 2022
This piece was the first time I ever glazed using oil paints. Starting with an acrylic underpainting, I slowly built up the semi-transparent layers of oil paint on top with the use of Gamblin’s gel oil medium.
Since this piece, I’ve used glazing as a method in most of my oil paintings. This was an invaluable step in my artistic journey which taught me helpful techniques for rendering the human body.
January 2023
From this point on, I would continue to use acrylic paint for underpaintings due to the quick drying time and range of colors (which would be more expensive in oil).
This painting on paper shows my painting process more in depth. I start at a central point and slowly work my way out and around the composition, moving in an organized fashion around my palette. This helps my paintings stay cohesive and consistent throughout.
February 2023
This demonstrates my drawing process with watercolors. Usually, I sketch out the image in graphite, which I then lighten and fill with large fields of watercolor. Once the paint is dry, I go in with colored pencil and render the image more completely, trying to strike a balance between the washiness of the paint and tighter lines of the pencils.
February 2023
This painting was an acrylic painting done in my sophomore spring semester. All paintings had to be completed with acrylic paint, which I struggled with because for me, skin was easier to paint in oil.
However, this picture shows my process overall, which I follow regardless of paint type. Working from a printed out reference picture, the last parts I usually touch are hair, eyebrows, hands, and the background.
March 2023
This picture shows my painting process as a whole: palette messied yet still logical, butcher paper filled with excess paint and brush marks, and painting situated on the floor where I sit and work.
August 2023
This painting differs a bit from others because I mixed as I painted for this one. It wasn’t for any assignment, just for my own enjoyment, and due to its size, I decided to just go for it without premixing.
August 2023
In undergrad, I built all my own stretchers and panels. I would go off the proportions of a reference picture and scale it up to my preferred size, which I would then build a stretcher to.
This was an important part of my painting process because it would make the entire painting as an object precious to me, carefully crafted and constructed in every aspect, from the wooden stretcher to the paint on top.
August 2023
After building stretchers and panels (or unstretching canvas from old paintings), I would stretch canvas over the frames and gesso them all. A process of gessoing, sanding, wet sanding, and repeating until 3 layers built up would typically take a day or two, but it was important that everything was done correctly so that the painting itself would have a solid foundation.
September 2023
This just shows a bit more of my painting process. Sometimes, I’ll leave sections slightly incomplete until I come back around to them later, as you can see from the unpainted sections of hair, ear, and clothing in this picture. This just depends on how I’m feeling as I go, even though I’ll eventually paint everything.
September 2023
For each painting, I figure out which color is most dominate in the reference picture and then choose whatever color is complementary as the underpainting. I tend to go with underpainting colors that are cooler because the skin I paint is typically warmer toned. This creates a lot of visual vibration and depth, especially when leaving parts of the underpainting shining through in midtones and shadows.
October 2023
Although I never completed this drawing, it shows my watercolor process. When working with one color, I’ll slowly build up the layers in light washes, keeping a cloth on hand to wipe away anything too dark.
October 2023
My underpaintings tend to have a looseness that is somewhat obscured in the completed painting. However, in some instances, I let the underpainting do some of the work, either shining through or informing me of which direction my brushstrokes should go in (following the form of the figure).
October 2023
Also in my underpaintings, I focus solely on value rather than temperature because I work with a single color. To start, I do one big wash over the whole canvas. I then wipe away the paint from highlights. From there, I start building up the midtones and shadows in larger blocks. This process usually only takes a couple of hours.
October 2023
This shows how I approach my graphite drawings. Taping off the borders to create a clean, distinct edges, I slowly build up the values with soft hatching marks. It helps to do this in sections (at least when drawing slightly bigger) for me, which is the same way I approach my paintings.
February 2024
This again shows an underpainting for one of my paintings. For this piece, I was focused very heavily on the luminance of the image, so I choose a lighter blue color, wiping away a lot of paint to preserve some of the white canvas.
March 2024
This is the first time I used this color green as an underpainting color. Trying to preserve the cool glow, I let it shine through the oil paint in the highlights.
This the painting about halfway completed. I started with the nose and worked my way around the face, slowly pushing and pulling with different values and moving toward the background and torso.
July 2024
In July 2024, I took two summer painting workshops at the Florence Academy of Art. In the portrait class, we learned how to paint models at sight-size with a limited palette consisting of four colors (lead white, yellow ochre, vermillion, and mars black). This helped me take a step back from my practice and relearn how to approach a painting more holistically.
July 2024
The other class I took at FAA was a figure painting class. Also painting a model sight-size and using the same limited, four-color palette, we focused on the large shapes of light and shadows and measuring proportions. It really helped me to take a step back and go from broad to specific.
I ended up enjoying my time there and really taking what I had learned back with me to the studio.
September 2024
Taking what I learned in Florence, I began to focus on a more gradual glazing technique, taking my time blocking out larger shapes of shadow and light to begin. Working on a smaller size canvas also allowed me to slow down and really find my footing with the knowledge and experience I had gained abroad.