Last week the Town and Country Decorative Painters hosted a 3-day seminar with Connie Parkinson. She came in a couple of days early and spent some time with me playing in my studio. It was a joy to have someone to paint with. We painted from 9am until 1:30am the next day and only stopped long enough to eat our lunch and dinner.
The paintings we did used an underpainting technique. They were painted on gesso board. The design was first painted in Burnt Sienna acrylic paint using a bit of water to thin it when we needed to created lighter tones. The result was a sepia-like painting. This technique is like grisaille (pronounced gris-eye) in which an underpainting is done in shades of gray. Once the underpainting is completed, the painting is completed with oil paints. In this case, we used the water-mixable oils.
The advantage to using Burnt Sienna rather than shades of gray for the underpainting is that Burnt Sienna is a warm color and puts life into the painting. All oils are somewhat translucent so whatever color is underneath will influence the finished work.
Here is one of the pieces we painted. This bowl of grapes is painted from a photo that appeared in Gourmet magazine in 2002. I loved the photo and wrote tot he photographer, Romulo Vanes, to ask permission to use it as a reference. He called me and was most gracious about giving his permission. Please remember that all photos in magazines are copyright and you must ask permission to use them or you could find yourself in legal difficulties. Not every magazine or photographer will be flattered or cooperative about giving their permission.
Grape Compote in sepia tones
Grape Compote
finished painting
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