Friday, January 11, 2008

Blue Guitarist oil painting


This is a real departure for me. Painting very large, in oils. It's based on a photograph I took of a musician (the photograph is one of the flickr slideshow showing on this blog). I'm streamlining him somewhat - changed the baggy jeans to tight ones. Changed his stance a little which has got me into trouble with the guitar but I'll get there in the end. So far I've stretched and gesso'ed the canvas, roughly drawn in my composition, and laid down thin layers of acrylic underpainting, and begun the layers of oil paint which I've never used before. I want it to be more abstract, but as usual I fiddle around and end up on a path to a realistic image while I'm laying in the building blocks of the painting. I need to leave the details alone for the moment. Once I've got the basic thing painted in oils, I'll see what I can do to jazz it up. The guitarist was standing in front of a large screen with music videos running silently and I caught this one with the female face floating there. The photographs I took that night were out of focus because I didn't want to use a flash - no atmosphere - and long exposure without a tripod and with the movement of the guitarist as he played doesn't make for a good clear photo But I liked some of the shots I got, especially this one, and with a friend offering the use of his studio for a week and having the space to paint big, thought I'd have a go at something different from my usual work. It's a brave thing I do posting a work in progress but it creates some pressure to continue to work on it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Brave? Yep :-)
Exciting? Yep!
I so want to see how this progresses. Good on you for working large. And in oils too. Talk about challenging yourself.