Osaka Ben

Here’s how I wasted/spent my Friday afternoon:
I was cleaning out the ol’ booth and found an abandoned canvas from my first (failed) painting attempt. I was itching to do something in oil again and this turned out to be the perfect opportunity. I threw work to the wind, threw down some dropsheets, threw down some paint… and amidst all the throwing, documented my process with a digicam.

Note:
This was really just for my own practice with technique and color - painting skulls probably isn’t a very impressive portfolio addition… At least, I don’t think so anyway… but the thing about skulls is that they are crunky and easy to interpret in your own sloppy manner - even if you fuck up a lot. No one is going to nitpick it as being “wrong.” Plus everyone likes skulls.

Materials:
Pet Sheets - great, versatile, disposable. I use them as a combo dropcloth/painter’s rag. They absorb nasty spills and you can readily and easily wipe your brushes and hands on them.
Brushes - I used 3 different sized filberts (they have a tip shape that resemble a curved magnum, if you find the paradigm helpful) 3 sizes help you work big to small.
Oil - Linseed oil. Typically, I might have done a first rough coat thinned with thinner and varied the oil types, but I didn’t want to wait another day for it to dry.

Un-materials (stuff I did without - you can too!):
Easel - I stood the painting up on a chair covered with pet sheets. Contrary to what you may have heard, you don’t necessarilyneed an easel to paint… at least not if the painting is under a meter in width and height. Ok, so maybe I’m just too cheap to pony up for one… but I find that being able to move the canvas around freely helps streamline my process.
Pallette - Every painter needs one of these, right…? Nah. Plastic Wrap taped down to pet sheets works fine in a pinch. Plus there’s no cleanup.

Here we go:

First I chose a base color in acrylic (red) and mixed it with gouche. I covered the canvas, almost completely blotting out my old painting. Yeah, I could’ve covered it 100%, but paint’s expensive, OK? Besides, I figured I’d end up covering a significant amount of the canvas anyway. In an even more unbelieveable fit of lazyness, I scrawled the basic shape in pencil (not very visible in the photo). Again, I figured I’d blot out these lines with medium. Had I been doing a drawing or layout less open to interpretation with more planning involved, I might have blown up a smaller sketch and traced it onto the canvas using graphite paper.

First I smothered the canvas with a thin layer of linseed oil (as opposed to directly mixing oil with my medium on the pallette.) This can be a nice technique to ensure that paint goes on smooth and can be blended cleaning around the canvas. Depending on your intent, this could impede your intended technique, but it usually suits me just fine. Apparently this is another one of those “old master” techniques, so file it away in your brain, ok? (PS - Thanks Jon - you’re still my oil painting hero!)

Next, using my biggest brush (remember, big to small) I start establishing some shadows and lines. No details whatsoever. If this had been acrylic, I might have roughed in some of the highlights and shadows with colored pencil first, but this being oil I’ll just refer to a quick rough sketch for tonal reference.

Now, I keep darkening my shadows. I am still skipping all details and keeping in mind that all brushstroke patterns can still be reworked. I was almost worried that I created too much contrast too soon… but that way of thinking is for jerks. Keep Painting.

More shadows have been defined and gradation has been more carefully chosen. I no longer need to glance at my underdrawing for reference at this point. This thing is looking sickly smooth though and desperately in need of texture. Plus there really isn’t any great depth or sense of 3d happening. This is the stage in a painting where I start getting panicky.

Now with a little more texture the painting pace picks up and feels relaxed again. I spend more time with the Texture near the center, but work around the canvas to ensure that its presence isn’t unnatural. I’m constantly drying off my brush so I can create more natural blends and gradations. (This is sometimes called “scumbling”… a word that sounds almost as dumb as “blog”) That’s how all those disposable pet sheets come in handy!

I might have been tempted in the past to stop the painting at this point and avoid further risk taking as the shadows and texture have started to come out nicer. But this is really where the painting needs a push! At this stage there are only midtones and shadows, and still no highlights. No contrast, and no punch. Again, this is intended to be a color study, so let’s at least try to use more than one! Don’t be afraid to take your painting to a new stage.

I should have broken this next part into 2 steps, but I got so involved with these highlights that I just spaced it. But all I did was move around the canvas with a yellow-green (looking back to my reference for hints.) I punched most of the highlight on the center.

Clean-up. One more time around to punch the highlights and punch the shadows. Also highlighted select portions of the that crusty crunchy skull texture to make it pop a little. To really play with some more light and cool, I’d like to let the canvas dry for a few days and then continue… with oil, you can only achieve so much with “wet - on - wet.” If this were acrylic, I could just keep layering and layering. Oil is just a different beast in that way.

To wrap it up, I painted the outside edges black with black gouche… if you’re too poor to afford Japanese framing (and who isn’t) then this is a great alternative to really close up the piece and make it ready for your wall. With the oil I used, in the mix, dry time will probably (?) be not more than 3 days.

The final product… or at least a bad picture thereof. I added shadows to punch the depth one last time. More later!
This was probably the biggest all-oil work I’ve done to date. Ok, so it looks like some tweaked uninspired biomech crap, doesn’t really read like part of a skull, and basically anybody could throw this up in a couple of hours. In fairness to myself I guess, it was only a practice run to get the oil in my veins flowin’ again. What do you think? Was it useful?

Meh, maybe I’ll just call this “Part 1″ and not update a “Part 2″ ever - sounds like a plan!