Studio Time

A couple of things occurred to me yesterday while I was working on this. One was that it would be be cool to grade from purple to yellow… sort of like a flower with a yellow center and violet petals. The other was that James Gurley is definitely one of the greatest guitarists ever to walk the earth… and one of the most underrated.

The above link is my small effort to resolve Mr. Gurley’s ratings problem. As to the issue of developing a gradient on this painting… I started with a thin glaze of Winsor Newton’s Griffin brand Indian yellow. “Griffin” is Winsor Newton’s line of alkyd colors. Alkyds are, for all intents and purposes, fast drying oils.

Next step was to brush Sennelier’s ultramarine violet into the outer part of that and to follow it with Winsor Newton’s cobalt violet. I spent some time manipulating the actual gradient then brushed titanium white into it. From a distance you can see the actual violet/yellow vignette/gradient. It’s not so apparent up close.

I went ahead and blocked in some of the forms on the outside with Winsor Newton’s scarlet vermilion to give things a kick and to establish a sort of reference to start building color from… to begin to develop relationships and so on. The colors in this photo are pretty accurate. Things will get “kickier”, more saturated, etc… White tends to “bleach” stuff out but it’s a fast way to define forms.

The medium is Liquin. Liquin is an alkyd based substitute for traditional mediums like linseed oil.