In The Studio: Just Paint 51 “Mother and Daughter Reunion”

This painting is another of my inventions, which is most of what I do, I start drawing and come up with a composition that I kind of like.  I’m a big believer in practicing drawing from memory and not always relying on the camera to create shapes.  Most of us can conjure up believable expressive drawings if we give our brains the opportunity to get involved in the process.  The camera short circuits the process.

I’m using the watercolor pretty thick and my intention is to make this a fairly abstract opaque piece, but I do want to get the feeling for the features although they will be pretty lost in the final painting.  I am using a number 6 and 8 oil painters filbert to apply the paint.  I need a really stiff brush to push the paint into the paper.  Quite different to all of those paintings where I have talked about expressive brushwork.  This is about color.

Just getting the paint down and continuing to work on the planes of light and direction of light.  The colors I am using are Thalo yellow green, hansa yellow, Peach Keene (Cheap Joe’s), Cobalt Turquoise, Burnt Sienna, and lots of Titanium White.

I have added a really dark passage of Cobalt Blue and Alizirin Crimson in the background trying to merge the colors without a big use of water.  The painting looks kind of rough but that is my goal, they all are not pretty little paintings with perfect washes.I ove rpaint on top of the yellow hair with titanium white applying the paint with a really rough textural feeling I want the main figure to be the focus with a hint of relationship with the little figure in the the background.