The past few weeks, we have talked about paper, paint, and brushes. Today, I want to dive into a discussion of a recent painting of mine, A Night at Anchor, and the materials I used and why.
When I did my preliminary work, AKA the thought process, I decided I wanted a painting that had a lot of flow and color mixing throughout. I call this process playing, in the sense that I play around, trust the process and see what comes together. I decided to paint on hot press paper due to its smooth texture that allows me the freedom of letting the colors flow and mix on the paper naturally. I then sketched out the painting to ensure that the placement is exactly where I want everything to be.
Finally ready to paint, I first sized the paper and once that was dry I started in on my sky. For my skies, I always do a wet-on-wet process because it captures the softness and the colors of a natural sky. Rarely do I ever need to touch up the sky. I continued on by tackling the body of water next since it is a big area. For the body of water, I used a wash of cobalt blue with a touch of sepia to help tone it down. After I did my wash, I moved along by adding trees in the background with a variety of greens and a dose of sepia to darken them. The mixture of various colors injected gives the trees a natural look. Once dried, I painted the boats with a dry-on-dry technique so the colors would stay controlled and wouldn’t bleed into the water. I turned to my cobalt and sepia mixture for this process. I then worked again on the water, using a dry-on-wet technique, which works well in creating a reflection. It also gives me a bit more control over where the colors are going while letting the wet paper do its magic. In the reflection, I mixed colors right on the paper which is why you see a variety.
As I finished up the painting I thought about the presentation. With this particular painting, a dark frame really brings out the contrast, so I decided on a double mat to tie it all together, making the top mat white and the bottom mat black, and a chard rustic frame. The final touch was to encase the painting in museum glass, which offers 99% UV protection and minimal glare.
Friendly reminder, prints of A Night at Anchor are available to shop on the website here.
Happy painting,
Wendy