Painting the Glorious Revolution (Discworld fan art)

The 25th of May is A very special day on the Discworld.  It's a day for remembering those we lost.

In the book The Nights Watch by Terry Pratchett, we see lilacs of remembering the Glorious Revolution.  A hard boiled egg also factors into it.  It's a great book and I thought it would be fun to paint something to remember it by.

This is the story of the painting process.  I hope it turns out well.

Sadly, I don't have a copy of the book and the library has a ridiculously long wait list on any terry Pratchett book.  So I did the next best thing to reading, I asked permies.  There are some great ideas.  But as I only have 10 days and am still struggling to learn to paint, I choose a simple motif.  

Lilacs
Hard Boiled Egg
Tea

The Planning and reference

I am trying to get better at making thumbnail sketches, so I started there.



It's okay I guess.  I kind of like the top center one and the more I look at these, the more I feel I want to go with a square format.  I didn't draw any square ones, but the feeling was strong.  

Next I figured out how to hard boil some eggs and did a photo shoot.



I played with composition a lot but also lighting.  When it comes to photography and painting, lighting is the thing that gets me excited.  I don't mind the subject so much, so long as the lighting is fun.

It's late afternoon and the window faces east, so it's diffused lighting to the right.  It's not too bad.  Very crisp, Victoriana look.  No strong shadows.  Pastels.  But not really getting the feel of The Glorious Revolution.  

I close the blinds and I get my standing lamp with daylight bulb (about 5k kelvin).  This has the light focused on the flowers just above the handle and gives the egg a fun 3D effect.  

This very very close to what I want.



I am especially glad I used a tripod and remote shutter button so I could shoot at 11 ISO stops, 100 iso, and get a deeper depth of field.

Almost no editing needed.  Cranked the contrast up 0.2 points and exposure up 0.33 (which doesn't make sense because each program uses a different number - basically, it's the smallest amount I can move the slider in that program)

But something still isn't quite right yet.  

Lights and shadows are in my mind.  Then I remembered that the book is probably named after the painting.  The Nights Watch by Rembrandt.  Rembrandt lighting is famous as he loves having the dark in the back and a directional beam of light on the subject.  So I think, what's the least amount of mucking about with this image I can do to get that effect?  Vignette!



This is what I settled on and got my copy printed at the local print shop today so I can use it as a reference.  

It was kind of annoying (in an okay way) as he pestered me with all sorts of questions about the software I used to generate the image.  Was it photoshop or did I use AI to make the image?  I don't think he believed me when I said I just do most of the work before pressing the shutter.  

I wonder if most people think that way now.  Only 3 years since Chat GDP and we are already trained to think all dramatic images are AI.  scary stuff.  

Maybe I choose the wrong one if it looks like ai made it.  Ai ain't that good yet.

The next step, get the drawing onto the canvas.  I have a 12x12 inch canvas already primed and ready to go.  That feels like a nice size.

Then tomorrow, I have decisions to make.

I enjoy painting in layers, but can I manage three layers in 10 days when most paints take a week or five to dry enough for the next layer?

maybe.

If only there was some way to tell how quickly (or slowly) different paints dry?   Oh look, I did the work already.  Love it when that happens and I hope to do more tests soon.  

The underpainting white was unimpressive in the test.  A little too little pigment and a greasy but stiff feeling.  Winton white is much slower drying, but it's a paint I know and I think this is good choice for the first layer as I want this to be a wall-worthy painting.  Mars black seems a good choice for the black as it's a warm (slightly reddish) black which works for the vibe I'm going for.  If I make some calcite medium with just linseed and marble dust, to mix in, this will speed up the drying time tremendously and make it easier to paint with.  

So that's the idea I have right now.  Paint a black and white underpainting so I don't have to deal with colour until later.  

I admit, purples are a bit scary for me as I've never mixed any in oils before.  The longer I can leave it until I do purple, the better.  

Thankfully I was able to get one of the printouts big enough at 12x12 inch so I could use it to trace the design onto my canvas instead of drawing it.  A bit of graphite paper and some creative interpretations of the flowers later and I have this.



My original plan was to use Winton titanium white and 1980 mars black.  Mix the two with a thick calcite putty.  The 1980 brand mars black was very wet and had a lot of binder separation.  Even before I put the putty in, it didn't feel very impressive.  The putty was made with the Gamblin pigment PW18 which should be a transparent calcite powder, but made the paints even more milky.  Two strokes on the canvas and I knew this wasn't going to work.  So I painted all the lovely paint I just mixed onto a bit of canvas paper in a greyscale kind of thing.  This is useful for testing glazing samples.

Instead, I went with what I know, the same white but Old Holland brand mars black... some extremely expensive paint I got for a steel on a "last chance" sale.  This is no longer an easy paint to get here.  Aka, hard to replace, expensive.   I don't really want to use it.  But I really want this painting to work.



My usual five piles.  I try to get the middle to match middle grey and I got pretty close this time.  I try not to use the black and the white when I'm painting an underpainting but for this one, there is a lot of area that needed black.  Which is good because that pile - the one that didn't get mixed with white - the pile of black off to the far right, dried beyond use in about four hours!  

Old Holland is an awesome paint, or so I'm told, because it has such an incredibly high pigment load.  It's also why I'm annoyed with it.  The old holland paints are designed to be used with a medium and I like painting right from the tube better.  But a tiny touch of linseed oil and it's working (about five drops for the whole paint session).

And this is where I got to.  



I was shocked by how difficult that terminator line was on the egg.  That's the line where the egg suddenly turns from light to shadow side - like the dusk/dawn line on earth.  And like the dawn/dusk line, I didn't quite get it right as it's... how to explain.  If one is in the tropics or near the equator, dusk happens FAST.  Sun is up, beautiful sunset for a few moments, then smack!  sun is down.  And I know this because in my foolish youth I went for a walk in the desert one afternoon.  It's only a half hour taxi ride, and the other town is just over there, let's just save the money and walk, then spend it on a nice meal in a restaurant.  And then the sunset came and boy was that beautiful, and look, stars, and all turned around looking at the different sky stuff.  Um... which way were we walking again?  There was zero light anywhere.  No one waiting for us.  And suddenly our shorts and tank tops seemed woefully inadequate.   It felt like about 5 hours of confusion, but the watch said it was only about 12 minutes.   Then suddenly, someone turned on the electricity and the town we were trying to get to was only a little to the right of where we expected it.  We were shivering already and too cold to eat by the time we reached town.

Never again shall I go walking unguided in the desert at sunset.

anyway.  eggs.

I'm from the Far North and sunsets here take Hours!  Not a few minutes like near the equator.  There, the sun practically falls from the sky.  Here, well... it's 4pm in late spring.  The shadows are getting long and it won't be long before the trees start to hide the sun a bit - maybe two or three hours from now.  And dusk will start soon after - so four or five hours.  Dark comes properly just after 9:30pm.  Ish.  It's still plenty light enough to see without a flashlight even without a moon.  

It wasn't like that in the dessert.  12 minutes from "wow, look at that sunset" to "oh, shit, it is so dark, we are fucked!"

eggs.

The terminator line looks consistent on an egg, but I think that's not right.  I got to paint more eggs to find out.  I wonder if I find the further from the light source, the more time dusk takes.  

And as I was painting the egg and trying to blend the shadows and light to smooth out that transition, the line kept moving.  I had to put my picture back on it and retrace the line which was most of an inch away from me fussing with the paint.  the egg was looking pretty wonky.

But I think I got it good enough for this layer.  

Because the paint is drying so fast, I'm trying to work in sections instead of across the whole painting like I want to.  I got to keep telling myself that I can fix things in the next layers.  It's a hard thing to remember.  

Between regular farm work and unscheduled human interruption, this first layer is taking so much longer than is reasonable.  I had hoped 1 day, but expected two days.  We are on day four and I'm almost half way done the first layer!

Each interruption is difficult as it takes a certain amount of focus to get in the zone.  Get the paints out of the clove box, mix up any colours that need it.  Get some music on.  Make sure there are no things that need doing for the next two hours.  take off my slippers and start looking.  After understanding the area I'm about to paint, load brush and paint.  Half an  hour later, unscheduled humans.

With every interruption, it's taking longer and longer to get back into the flow of things.  I am thinking of taking the whole thing to the basement and locking myself in a soundproof room to get this layer done.  But if I did that, something worse would happen like the house burning down.  So alas, I deal with what I have.

Where did we get to?  Oh yes, interruptions.

The mars black stiffens beyond use in only four hours.  Which is good as it will dry quickly on the canvas, but sad because it's one of the most expensive tubes of paint I've ever touched.  I've been trying to improve my clove box setup and it's getting there.  



I bought this expecting it was wood, and it isn't.  The goal is to rub linseed oil and clove essential oil into the wood to create a slick surface that smells of cloves.  The small airspace combined with cloves would slow down the drying time of the un-painted oil paints.  That's the theory.  However, I can tell it's not wood because the places where I dropped essential oils and didn't rub it in for several seconds, are blistered.  Essential oils like clove and rosemary oil are STRONG solvents.  They dissolve all sorts of plastic and coatings easily.

But it's still working for now and now that I have all the mixing done, I'm just painting right form the clove box so I can close it up when interrupted.  

Like when a flock of woodducks land on the balcony railing outside the window to watch me.  They are so pretty!

Maybe a wood duck painting is in my future?


Another way to deal with distractions is to use a brush dip.  This is a jar or metal container with a grid or spring in it to let the pigment fall down away from the bristles.  I put safflower oil in it as it's slow drying and a few drops of either rosemary or clove essential oil.  Since the mars black is drying so fast, I can simply put my brushes in the oil when I step away from the painting.



When it comes time to paint again, I wipe off as much of the oil as I can, then dip the brush in linseed oil (faster drying) and wipe that off.  The extra step with linseed oil isn't needed, except I do want this layer to dry as fast as possible and safflower oil slows this down.

oh, and progress report:

Values aren't always easy.  In this case, it's the light and darkness of the image that I'm trying to get right, or just a bit lighter than the final goal.  Having a black and white printout that I can test on is a massive help for me.  



You can see lots of places where I got it wrong.  And the places where I got it right don't show up at all.  Thankfully, I got more right than wrong.  It's training my eyes and maybe one day I won't want this trick.  But that's a long way off as I find it difficult to judge how the paint will look with the "hold the palette knife up to the source" trick.


I got most of the cup and saucer painted to my standards of "good enough".  It's time to start the flowers.



I say "good enough" but between you and me, I am absolutely chuffed with how this is turning out.  I had no idea I could paint this well.  I had a vision, I put paint on canvas, somehow the two things are matching!  Amazing.



For reasons I hope will become clear once colour happens, the flowers have a lot of texture.  Thick paint that will take ages to dry.  I can tell already, this won't be ready for colour before the 25th and this makes me sad.

But it will be worth it.  

I don't know if you can see in the photos, but in person, it looks almost like there is colour in there.  An optical illusion or a trick of how warm mars black interacts with cool titanium white?  The cup and saucer especially already look the correct colour.  It's weird.



It's taken me 8 days to get this far on the first layer.  One would imagine the early parts of the painting would be dry by now, but no such luck.

I've only read the book, The Nights Watch, once.  And to be blunt, I didn't like it then.  It was a while ago and there was something wrong about the rhythm of the book.  The humour wasn't as pithy as Pratchett's other books and it felt like the jokes were trying to be better than me.  I almost didn't finish it.

But it's also the one book of the Discworld series that stayed with me more than any other.  Images from it invade my daily life, especially now our lilac trees are making the majority of the hedgerow.  And as time goes on, it becomes a powerful memory in my life.  Perhaps I can read it again some day with the understanding I have now.  I even put it on my wishlist.   In the book, the protagonist, Sam, deals with the grief of his memory, and the knowledge that his wife and love might die in childbirth on that day.  And so many other heavy things and time travel and even a zombie - but he's reg and would be lovely if he wasn't a lawyer.  There are deep emotions there.  

While I'm painting this, I'm processing a lot of memory and emotions I didn't know were so heavy on me.

The day when an old ewe died due to complications due to injury.  One of my first sheep and she taught me a lot about lambing, pasture management, and soil building.  She taught me more about farming than every book, magazine, and youtube video combined.

And on the same day, a pair of geese hatched their first gosling in over five years of trying.  They are so proud.

The grief of the loss dampened the joy of the hatching.  And the joy lessened the grief.

And that really pisses me off because they shouldn't cancel each other out like that and leave someone numb.  That ewe deserves the grief because she was a wonderful sheep.  And the new gosling - well that's one of my most favourite things to see on the farm.

It's like that old poem says "the world is too much with us" - sometimes life is too loud and it's hard to deal with all the things that press upon us.  

And painting helped more than I had imagined it could.   I don't know how to explain it.  

Even in a year from now when I will laugh at my current skill level with scorn, this will still be one of my favourite paintings because it means so much more than just some flowers and a stinking hard boiled egg (I hate hard boiled eggs).  



Now that I've lived more life, I wonder what I would think  of The Nights Watch if I read it again.  I imagine it would be an entirely different book.

And I wonder if there are any other painting ideas hidden in discworld.

r ranson wrote:But it's also the one book of the Discworld series that stayed with me more than any other.  Images from it invade my daily life, especially now our lilac trees are making the majority of the hedgerow.  And as time goes on, it becomes a powerful memory in my life.  Perhaps I can read it again some day with the understanding I have now. In the book, the protagonist, Sam, deals with the grief of his memory, and the knowledge that his wife and love might die in childbirth on that day.  ...  There are deep emotions there.  

Oh wow, that's just triggered a really deep and powerful memory in me too.

When my husband was ill in hospital, I would catch the early train into town every morning to go and visit him, and I would often meet with the woman who cleaned the local stations as she caught the same train. The train was late one morning, and we got talking. She had a tiny bunch of flowers in her hand and explained to me that it was Domingo de ramos, literally 'Sunday of the flowering-branch' or Palm Sunday as most of us know it as. Then, as she had free access to all of the station, including the gardens, and knew that the train was going to be late and why I was going into town, she scooted off and collected a wonderful bouquet of flowers, including a load of lilac, for me to take in to my husband.

And a couple of weeks later when I was at my absolute lowest, another neighbour who kept a most awesome flower garden presented me with this. I still cry when I see it...

And now I wait a week or several before adding the first colour layer.   I hope it doesn't take too long to dry.

R, thank you so much, for this thread! Learning about your process is very helpful, to me, and explains to me why I never went further with my own (admittedly not oil) painting. Even with good shading, I could never achieve more than what felt (to me) like a 'flat' result. It had never occurred to me to begin with a sketch on the canvas, then to do a grayscale underlay! Maybe an actual class or 50 would have made the difference, for me. You, my dear, are revealing the best 'secrets' to this particular 'me do it' girl! I always look forward to your next art adventure!

Thank you for sharing your painting adventures - the result is already looking finished to me!

r ranson wrote:I bought this expecting it was wood, and it isn't.  The goal is to rub linseed oil and clove essential oil into the wood to create a slick surface that smells of cloves.  The small airspace combined with cloves would slow down the drying time of the un-painted oil paints.  That's the theory.  However, I can tell it's not wood because the places where I dropped essential oils and didn't rub it in for several seconds, are blistered.  Essential oils like clove and rosemary oil are STRONG solvents.  They dissolve all sorts of plastic and coatings easily.

I suspect it is the lacquer reacting. You could try sanding it all off, leaving just the wood underneath for next time? Or try and find another virgin box.

Nancy Reading wrote:Thank you for sharing your painting adventures - the result is already looking finished to me!

r ranson wrote:I bought this expecting it was wood, and it isn't.  The goal is to rub linseed oil and clove essential oil into the wood to create a slick surface that smells of cloves.  The small airspace combined with cloves would slow down the drying time of the un-painted oil paints.  That's the theory.  However, I can tell it's not wood because the places where I dropped essential oils and didn't rub it in for several seconds, are blistered.  Essential oils like clove and rosemary oil are STRONG solvents.  They dissolve all sorts of plastic and coatings easily.

I suspect it is the lacquer reacting. You could try sanding it all off, leaving just the wood underneath for next time? Or try and find another virgin box.

Sadly, it's a plastic sticker thing that looks like wood on particle board.   Sometimes online stuff sucks.  But it was cheap and it sort-of works until I can find a wooden box.  

Carla Burke wrote:R, thank you so much, for this thread! Learning about your process is very helpful, to me, and explains to me why I never went further with my own (admittedly not oil) painting. Even with good shading, I could never achieve more than what felt (to me) like a 'flat' result. It had never occurred to me to begin with a sketch on the canvas, then to do a grayscale underlay! Maybe an actual class or 50 would have made the difference, for me. You, my dear, are revealing the best 'secrets' to this particular 'me do it' girl! I always look forward to your next art adventure!

Thank you for your kind comment.  

I think I went for values because it's easier for me.  Is it lighter or darker.  Just one  thing to think about.

Colour I have to think about hue (what colour is it), saturation (how much strong is the colour) and value as well.  

The black and white painting stage takes away a lot of stress as I can do shape and value first.  Then colour later.  I feel really lazy doing it this way.  

I don't think it's lazy. You're doing extra layers. And, I think your results are gorgeous.

Paint me more than a bit impressed.

R, thank you for sharing the process and meaning of your painting. I can't wait to read more and excited to see the next layers.

Very interested in your process and how well  you are documenting everything. In my training, we would do an under painting of a (usually) neutral color and then sometimes do a “grisee” layer to put in all the darks. Then color.
Also never use linseed oil, but Galkyd to thin paints and Gamsol to clean brushes and also to thin paints. Supposedly those dry more quickly but I’ve never used anything else so I’ve nothing to compare it to.
I was also taught to avoid using pure black but instead “make” black by mixing dark colors, using colors from your composition. Maybe add black to that if you can’t get it dark enough. Also to add tiny bits of color to white and save pure white for  bits of brightest highlights.
But you look like you know what you’re doing and what you want to achieve, so ignore these suggestions as you’ve got a really nice painting.

I LOVE THIS!

Many many many years ago, before I met my husband, I placed a personal's ad that said "Between Carrot & Vimes, who is the better man and why?" And that bait caught me a MUCH higher quality catch of prospective dates than my usual attempts at finding potential partners did, (but only 1 of them gave the 'correct' answer out of the  dozen+ responses I got lol)

You are very talented, but that's so disappointing about the AI software question

Come on humans, let's get it together please...

Black is a funny one.

The more I learn about painting, the more I feel beginners do best to stay away from it.  It's too easy to forget it has hue (colour) and saturation (much-ness of the colour).  It often gets treated like a value adjuster only and that's where new painters go wrong.  

Lamp and ivory black are very good blue replacement because they are very dark values, low saturation,  blue on the colour wheel.  Mars falls more towards red and is useful when the shadows want to be warm.

But the more I paint, the more I feel that shunning black paint is sad.  It's like not using the table saw because when we were four years old, it was forbidden.   Trying to cut a sheet of plywood with a safety hand saw...it works, but not as well.  

Untill about 1880, black was a well loved colour by the masters who recognized it had hue and saturation, in addition to value.  Then something snapped and suddenly it became forbidden (in western Europe and north america, but not so much elsewhere)

I love choosing which colour of black works best for which situation.  And when I need a black to behave differently than I can get it out of the tube, like a transparent black, I can quickly mix a chromatic one from three primaries.

Transparency and drying time also influence which colour black I choose.  In this case mars black is one of the naturally fastest drying pigment there is.  Nice and opaque to stand up to the bullying of Titanium white.  

I LOVE IT ALL!!!

Long live the Clack.

r ranson wrote:Black is a funny one.

The more I learn about painting, the more I feel beginners do best to stay away from it.  It's too easy to forget it has hue (colour) and saturation (much-ness of the colour).  It often gets treated like a value adjuster only and that's where new painters go wrong.  

Lamp and ivory black are very good blue replacement because they are very dark values, low saturation,  blue on the colour wheel.  Mars falls more towards red and is useful when the shadows want to be warm.

But the more I paint, the more I feel that shunning black paint is sad.  It's like not using the table saw because when we were four years old, it was forbidden.   Trying to cut a sheet of plywood with a safety hand saw...it works, but not as well.  

Untill about 1880, black was a well loved colour by the masters who recognized it had hue and saturation, in addition to value.  Then something snapped and suddenly it became forbidden (in western Europe and north america, but not so much elsewhere)

I love choosing which colour of black works best for which situation.  And when I need a black to behave differently than I can get it out of the tube, like a transparent black, I can quickly mix a chromatic one from three primaries.

Transparency and drying time also influence which colour black I choose.  In this case mars black is one of the naturally fastest drying pigment there is.  Nice and opaque to stand up to the bullying of Titanium white.  

I think it's important for most beginners to stay away from black and white because they/we would use "black" or "white" for many dark or light colors if they haven't yet trained themselves to recognize the difference between Mars Black, Paine's Grey, or even a very dark brownish green that's definitely not black and would look extremely out of place if black were used. We're sloppy with color descriptions. Think of the number of people described as having "black hair" and then look closely at black hair in the sunlight, preferably on a few different heads of hair! Not only are they not truly black, but the colors we notice under bright light are not the same. Some very dark hair is chestnut brown, some we'll want to accentuate the blue tones seen under bright light if we were to paint it, another has coppery notes, but all are very dark, the chestnut brown is probably the lightest in hue of the three. My mother had an art teacher who taught students, "Never use black, use Paine's Grey", and that worked fine in her work, which tended to be natural scenes with a lot of blue, but I think it's better to teach people to see, and perhaps to use caution with black, but perhaps use it deliberately. I believe I recall seeing a older National Gallery of Art painting with men in top hats where I'm pretty sure true black was used, and it was really striking. I don't recall the artist, and I could be wrong, of course, that much not quite black would also be striking.

Anyway, I agree that rules can be broken. I love this thread, and look forward to seeing the finished work. Perhaps I'll boil an egg to celebrate!

I often look at results and I notice that I much prefer paintings done by "old masters" to the current day teachers saying "never use black".

The old masters definitely used true black pigments prior to 1841 when the paint tube was invented.  Although about 1780s we start to see the separation in england between paint maker (or colourist as they were called) and painter.  By the impressionist time, and painting outdoors, we see black being shunned in France and it spreads around the western european and north american art traditions to the state we are in now.

Before paints were tubed (or bladdered), paint was like sushi.  Great when fresh, but got to use it quickly or it goes off with disastrous effect.  They are also both woefully expensive for ingredients and added labour.

Also, paint is nothing like sushi.  Don't eat paint.

If someone has a choice of spending a few hours (or getting their apprentice to) mixing two colours of paint from expensive pigments that are only going to be useable for a couple of days at best; or mixing one colour quickly from cheapest pigments... yep, they are going to go with the one that takes the least time and cost.  That's black.  

When they do examinations on paintings from, let's say the Dutch Masters age like Rembrandt and Vermeer, we can see they are using one or two pigments per layer.  Sometimes as many as three or four, but not often.

What a crazy thought in this day and age when we see many artists using at least six different paints on the palette at one time.  Often more than 20 wet paint colours at a time!  

But anyway.  

The old dead guys were really good at using black and used it like a colour.  They didn't mix a black unless they had a very good reason to (like transparency).  

It's not until the end of the 19th Century that black does a few things.
- it gets forbidden
- it looses colour status and becomes a value only without hue or saturation.  

Black paint doesn't behave like this - but somehow this starts being taught in art education.  I think it is sad to shun a valuable tool just because some art teacher 100 years ago couldn't tell the difference between value and colour.  

Then again, when I started painting, I believed the "don't use black" school of thought with all my heart.

Then I went to class, and the very first thing we did was to mix yellow ochre with black to make a green!  Black makes the most realistic and amazing greens when mixed with various yellows.

From there I started to question all these different "rules" and why we have them.  

I've also got a rant about white paint and how it is never white.  https://permies.com/t/277675/art/White-exist-Solving-chalky-paint

Burra Maluca wrote:

Oh wow, that's just triggered a really deep and powerful memory in me too.

...

And a couple of weeks later when I was at my absolute lowest, another neighbour who kept a most awesome flower garden presented me with this. I still cry when I see it...

Such a beautiful story, and also sad.  Thank you for sharing.

I never really understood how important flowers are before.  They seem so temporary.  But also, that's the advantage of them.  It's what makes them so important.

These lilacs caused all sorts of bother.  They would only stay perky for an hour after cutting, even water, they started to droop and I would have to go out and cut some more.  

Carla Burke wrote:R, thank you so much, for this thread! Learning about your process is very helpful, to me, and explains to me why I never went further with my own (admittedly not oil) painting. Even with good shading, I could never achieve more than what felt (to me) like a 'flat' result. It had never occurred to me to begin with a sketch on the canvas, then to do a grayscale underlay! Maybe an actual class or 50 would have made the difference, for me. You, my dear, are revealing the best 'secrets' to this particular 'me do it' girl! I always look forward to your next art adventure!

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm very lucky to have a teacher that shares different styles of painting, although their first love is a kind of realism we don't see much in current day art styles.  

They say the only difference between realism and the other styles of painting is that realism focuses on values (dark and lightness to make the object feel 3D) and the amount of time it takes.  

This style I'm trying in this painting takes a crazy amount of time.  But I kind of love it!  

I also love how incredibly frugal it is.  Most of the paint is this cheap white and black (or other earth colour depending on the effect I want).  When it comes to the colour layer, I'll be applying the paint just a few microscopic pigment particles thick.  Hardly any of the expensive paint at all.  At least that's the plan.  Reality has yet to have her say.  

Kelly Craig wrote:Paint me more than a bit impressed.

Thank you.

Cute kitties.

Cheryl Loomans wrote:R, thank you for sharing the process and meaning of your painting. I can't wait to read more and excited to see the next layers.

Thank you.

I'm excited about this too.  Each day I check to see how quickly it's drying.  

I even put it in a window so it can get strong indirect light which will speed up the curing time.  Oil paint does this weird chemical reaction thing instead of drying like most things and light helps with that.  The pigments aren't likely to fade in a few days of sitting  in the window... or at least they shouldn't.  I hope.  

Rebekah Curtis wrote:I LOVE THIS!

Many many many years ago, before I met my husband, I placed a personal's ad that said "Between Carrot & Vimes, who is the better man and why?" And that bait caught me a MUCH higher quality catch of prospective dates than my usual attempts at finding potential partners did, (but only 1 of them gave the 'correct' answer out of the  dozen+ responses I got lol)

This is a great idea for a personal ad!  I can see how it would dramatically improve the quality of the respondents.  
Thanks for sharing.

Redd Hudson wrote:I LOVE IT ALL!!!

Long live the Clack.

GNU Terry Pratchett

More about black paint and an experiment one can do to see the hue (colour) that different blacks have.

Update on the painting.

I finished the first colour layer but the photos are trapped on my camera and other drama means a few more weeks until I can share the story.

In the mean time, colour has wrecked an already dubious egg.  I think it's dry enough I can take it to painting class and hopefully the teacher can help me corse correct.

r ranson wrote:Update on the painting.

I finished the first colour layer but the photos are trapped on my camera and other drama means a few more weeks until I can share the story.

In the mean time, colour has wrecked an already dubious egg.  I think it's dry enough I can take it to painting class and hopefully the teacher can help me corse correct.

I've been eagerly awaiting an update. If you'd be willing to photo and paste your "wrecked egg" before it's fixed, I'd be really interested in seeing that as well. It would really interest me, and I suspect others as well, to see how artists get "stuck" and then fix their issues.

I'm looking forward to watching the video on "black hues" in the above post as well! So glad this thread is active again, even though I don't yet have the skills to paint nor the time to develop them. I have some very old oil paints of my mother's somewhere in my basement and have wanted to dig them up and see which ones are usable at some point.

Thank you

Oh yes, I will share my defective egg.

I love seeing troubleshooting in painting, but most online painters never make mistakes so we never get to see how to fix them.  I'm making lots of mistakes to fix.

r ranson wrote: most online painters never make mistakes so we never get to see how to fix them.  I'm making lots of mistakes to fix.

Hmm, I suspect that most online painters do not share their mistakes.....thank you for telling it like it really is!

From my laughter across the continent, you know I emphatically agree with Nancy.