Best of the Year, Part I

Happy 2013 to all my viewers! I'd like to start off the new year by sharing my favorite discoveries and new products of the past year. Some are new to the market, while others are things I'd just not explored before and hope to work with more in the year to come. I hope that some of you will enjoy using them too.

Today's post is about my favorite pigment of 2012: PR206. It is actually a Quinacridone red, but looks more earthy than many of the Quins. This pigment gives me a warm red, transparent earth color. It can easily be mixed with earthy yellows to yield the equivalent of a transparent red oxide. When mixed with ultramarine blue, it creates a dark, muted violet. I started using this color in my watercolor palette after taking a class with David Taylor. It became such a staple in my palette that I searched for the same pigment in oils and acrylics. The past few years have found me working transparently a lot more in both oils and acrylics, so this pigment was a natural fit --- especially for underpainting and glazing. I did several paintings using it as my only red. The pigment goes by many different names, so you need to look carefully for the pigment number, which is PR206.

Here are a few manufacturers that make it for different mediums.

Watercolor
Daniel Smith --- Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet
Winsor Newton --- Brown Madder

Oils
Maimeri Puro --- Avignon Orange
Daniel Smith --- Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet

Acrylics
Golden Fluid --- Quinacridone Burnt Orange
Golden Heavy Body --- Quinacridone Burnt Orange
Golden OPEN --- Quinacridone Burnt Orange

Click here to see Best of the Year, Part II.

Painting Black and White Oils

6×8″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

The little monochrome painting above was done at a pond up the road from me that has wonderful mountain views. I asked for permission to park and paint there, and the gentleman in the driveway said that his wife was also an artist, and that I should go knock on her studio door and say hi! Well, I did that and made another new artist friend in the area! It turns out that she will be in a show with me next weekend. Such a small world! Her studio overlooks this dramatic view, and she had an especially beautiful winter scene that she’d done from the window.

I used the opportunity to do a monochrome painting, then a limited palette painting. I’ll go back again and do a full color version.

In addition to the value paintings I’ve been doing in acrylic, I have an oil painting setup to do monochrome studies easily and quickly in oils. I use the Judson’s Guerrilla Painter 6×8 watercolor box, Gamblin Light, Medium and Dark Portland Grays, plus Ivory Black and Titanium White. I also keep three colors in here for limited palette studies: Transparent Yellow Oxide, Transparent Red Oxide and Ultramarine Blue. (You can click this image to enlarge it a bit.) It has a cover, and fits right inside my 6×8″ Guerrilla pochade box.

Monochrome Oil Sketch of Troy

20×16″, Oils on Canvas covered hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

You may remember two weeks ago when I sketched Troy in pastel. We had no open studio last Thursday since it was Thanksgiving, but today I went back, oils in hand, for another sketch. I used Rembrandt Ivory Black, Gamblin Torrit Grey, and Winsor Newton Artist Titanium White with a little Winsor Newton Griffin Titanium White mixed in to speed drying. I also used Weber Res-n-gel medium.

Troy will keep the same pose for three weeks, and most of the artists are keeping their spots and working all three weeks on the same painting. I waited until after the posing started for any returning artists to reclaim their previous spots before setting up in a new position, but go figure…. (Yes, you know what’s coming!)… As soon as I got set up, someone came in late and said, “You’re in my spot!”

I didn’t really care where I painted from; I just didn’t want to miss the posing time. There is never enough time with the model! Anyway, this ended up being about two hours of posing time altogether. I always seem to have difficulty getting the head situated exactly where I want it on the canvas. This time, I really took my time with placement and it ended up right where I wanted it to be! Amazing!