Artist - Part 3 - Starting Up the Painting Machine Again

I have finally started my latest painting. After the past few months I feared that it would be harder than it was. I setup a new glass palette and started looking for a stretched canvas. In my minds eye I have just stretched three canvases so there is never any need to prepare more. So, there I was Sunday afternoon without anything to paint on. I was egger to go back to a more traditional ground (PVA), but that takes about a week to dry. I found an underpainting from March that was abandoned because of the boring composition. I figured if I re-primed the canvas I’d loose a day of painting, so I decided to paint directly over the failed attempt. The underpainting looks chaotic but I am more concerned with drawing and proportion. (the first picture is of my underpainting, the second is a poor photo of my still life setup)

I also had to run to the market to get 4 limes to last a week. Hopefully the fruit keeps it shape and colour while painting it.

So far I’ve just blocked in the bottles and lime roughly. I draw with a 1” filbert horse hair, some oil paint (burnt umber) and mineral spirits. I use old rags to tone the canvas and I also use the rags to draw (negatively) with. My underpaintings don’t have a huge tonal range like they once did when I would layer glazed colours on top. I paint more directly on my underpainting so my paint is thicker and I control the tones at the same time I add colour.