here are a couple of shots that were taken during several of the final days on “Peering”. things got a little too dense and saturated -as they often do- so i obscured/lightened quite a few things with some semi-opaque glazes and opaque marks. it’s always good to unsettle areas that are too precious and defined– i find it can restore a spirit of authenticity and spontaneity sometimes.
it’s frustrating as hell not knowing where you’re going in the middle phases, but it does lead to this great mistake-making, and repeated give/take that ultimately gives the piece character and a kind of patina.
and just as plopping down confident white highlights can give you a rush of accomplishment, drawing authoritative, bright, opaque lines on a muddy, sloppy area can feel like you’re creating order with the hand of god. like tidying a room with the wave of your hand. if only the whole process was like that.

here i keep adding some semi-opaque and translucent glazes to whatever areas seem to cry out for them. i push things back and pull some things forward by making them diffuse or sharp. again, these stages have no rhyme nor reason, and they can’t be easily quantified or rushed. i get really zen and just let the painting tell me what it needs. the moment you try to impose deadline or required outcome, you start digging a hole for yourself. if you let the painting dictate where it wants to go, you happily sidestep the hole and stroll along on the surface.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
hey, check it out– it’s starting to look a bit like a painting! very slight differences here, but they represent a lots of time and thought…

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
here you can see how i begin to address the black dead trunk. i find it way more effective to define the dark edges by stroking the edge with something light, rather than trying to darken, darken, darken. it’s SO easy to darken later with a super traslucent glaze. so i try to avoid that battle till closer to the end. for now, i just want to get something interesting happening in that quagmire.
you can see that i’m gradually trying to define the subtleties of what’s happening between the two figures’ heads,  and the light/shade, and negative space involved. that’s really the core of the image, so it’s important that that work well.

now that the drawing has been transferred onto canvas, i just cover the whole thing with a slop of rusty red. you can use any colour you like for this, the trick is just to make sure it’s sufficiently transparent that you don’t totally obscure the drawing. i often use a colour that is the opposite of what most of the painting will end up being– so in this case, a red ground for a largely green painting. i learned that trick from my friend Leila who would paint an entire painting in exact opposites first, then re-paint the whole thing in the final colours. so for a red shirt, she’d paint it green first, then later paint it red. the result is a really great luminescence and sort of twinkly, alive feeling to the painting because you get a bit of the compliment of peaking though. it’s almost like an optical illusion that confuses the eye. it’s much like the opalescence you see on the inside of a oyster shell. i’m way too lazy to do it as meticulously as Leila, but i’m going for the same end result.
so with this first assault on the canvas, just broad applications of reds and greens. it looks awful and gutless, but it makes for a great foundation on which to build.

here you see the reds/greens (or warms/cools) starting to build a sloppy kind of colour mesh. i’m adding really moderate lights and darks with the greens and leaving the mids as is. maybe a couple very obvious white highlights- just to trick myself into feeling like i’m making more progress than i really am. they’ll all eventually get more or less painted over, and then replaced later.

next time i re-inforce a lot of what was shown here, gradually building up contrast and texture, and beginning to introduce some colour.