Thursday, April 9, 2009

Pirate Self Portrait

I wasn't very satisfied with the last self portrait. I didn't like the colors and the pose was pretty boring so I thought I'd give it another shot. This time I put down four or five layers of gesso and sanded them pretty well and used raw umber to tone the ground. I kept my palette a little more limited than I usually do. (usually=every five months or so that I can get a chance to to oil paint) Raw Umber, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, cadmium red, yellow ochre, titanium white, and ivory black. I also tried out a new color that I have never used before: prussian blue. I am really liking it and I think I will keep it a regular. Notable colors missing from my usual palette are cadmium yellow, viridian, ultramarine, and cobalt blue. the prussian blue seems to be a pretty flexible color, I was able to get several really nice greens when I mixed it with the ochre, umber and black and white. Excuse my blurry work in progress shots.












It didn't turn out very piratey, I know. I did another one yesterday that I really went for the "arrr" in me. I'll post it soon with wips as well.

3 comments:

Brian Kelley said...

you sure you didnt just draw bret from flight of the conchords?

http://www.buddytv.com/gallery3/viewer.aspx?type=cat&context=896&id=9374

DKS said...

I've been looking at some old masters who do the whole white-yellow-red-black and sometimes brown palette. This might be worth a look: Watteau, who I normally think of as full of color has something very close to your palette. As Titian and Giorgione (maybe the whole Venetian school) knew how to get lots of color out of an otherwise tonal-biased palette (or so I think most people today would see it as tonal).

BK

Nate Shaw said...

BK,

I was modelling the pallete off of Rembrandt's. I didn't know that Watteau had a palette like it also. I guess it makes sense because only recently have some of the colors really become affordable. Are all of Watteau's paintings of a limited palette like that? I'll be honest, I am really into tonal palttes. I haven't experimented enough with color to really paint in any other way than I draw.

N