This is a close up of what Van Gogh called a retical.
His was on a post that stuck in the ground at standing height.
You can see the threads dividing quarters. My retical is
over the top of the painting. Neither of us really needed it.
| Day 1, The grid lines are drawn in charcoal to match the threads of the reticulator. Charcoal is also used to draw in the image and a chamois erases it clean. If this painting were in oil paint I would just start painting. 
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Day 1, the lines of charcoal are painted over with Burnt Umber and Liquitex Fluid Medium instead of using water to dilute the paint. It's a stronger bond to the support than water only.
Nothing moves while the support is washed free of charcoal. 
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The whole painting was given a coat of jar white acrylic, spread thinly. This gives a smoother surface that receives washes nicely, plus, if I leave any spaces uncovered with new paint the gesso will still have real paint over it.
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Day 2,
I painted the sky in over the trees line drawing, repainted the basic tree limbs and trunks and added enough color to get me started. 
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| Day 3, Corrected all of yesterdays errors with white from 10 to 11:30.
Adding smaller tree branches now, I want to get a lot of them. I can always block out the areas of branches that have leaves over them. I paint a tree in 3 area parts; the inside back of the shell, the middle area with the branches and the front, the outside foreground shell of leaves or flowers. I will add more to the back area next. By jumping between the back shell colors and middle branches the tree takes shape. The texture of the small flowers is small , too small for just a brush. I grabbed a sponge and picked pieces out of it until I had a nice veritable surface and started dabbing, sky color over solid purple areas and purple flowers over the sky. I'll work over the whole picture now, this is the light I want, in the afternoon, the light coming from the right 3:00 I'm definitely at that "everything's a mess" stage but at least I have a 100% coverage. That usually means I'm 1/2 way finished.
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| Day 4 and 5, Day 5, What a day! I decided the time for the color in this painting was in the late afternoon. So, this morning I started another painting. I saw a church last week at 7:00 in the morning and the morning light was fantastic. It's a light yellow building with bright sunlight on it. I made a note to paint it the next chance I got. Well this is it. So I spent 4 hours drawing it this morning. Now I have a 7 to 11 and a 12 to 5. They are only 25 minutes apart and I'll be staying at a friends between the two. Expect perfection, it happens all the time! |
Day 8,
| Jacaranda Flowers all around me.
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| Day 9, finished, except maybe the road.
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Day 11, I needed some power. This tree, a week later, today, was finished. The flowers were down to 10 %, but I could see the trees branches a lot clearer and could tell were the bunches were.
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Finished
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NEXT PAINTING, St. James the Less Church, Ulupalakua
PREVIOUS PAINTING, Water Color, Yellow Tea Pot
