Hathaway

On Painting – process

DodododoDadadada

Extinct species are wander around the wonderful modern world. The Dodo leaves his opinion on the pavement.

The Big Sky

The nine Classic Muses look ridiculous in the face of a real tidal wave. Unstable Betelgeuse glitters in the sky

No one really remembers starting to draw and paint… It’s just something that we all do as children isn’t it? I was very fortunate in that I do remember starting to play with oil paints at a very early age, being lucky enough to have been gifted a second hand set of Windsor and Newton oils – together with hog brushes – from a relative who ‘couldn’t get on with them’.

Quickly hooked on the look and feel of oils, I set about reading everything I could (thank whatever your god is for libraries) and taking every opportunity to see, in the flesh so to speak, real paintings in galleries by real painters, trying to understand what and how they did things, then trying to apply it to my own early attempts. This quickly morphed into a cycle of trying, failing and learning – which persists into what is now my eighth decade on the planet. I imagine it will only stop when I do………..

Early on in all this looking and reading, I managed to convince myself that an oil painting couldn’t be ‘real’ unless it looked as though Vermeer had painted it. In the 60 or so years since then my view has modified a bit (but, to be honest, not that much!). He was/is/always will be a genius, and I have him to thank for my introduction to monotone underpainting – a.k.a. the historical ‘Flemish Method’.

The Flemish Method

Greater minds than mine have written at length on this, and you are commended to plunge headfirst into the ocean of knowledge that is the internet for a more academic explanation than you will find here: a search on ‘flemish method monotone painting’ will return more pages than you can shake a brush at.

Enough words! – here is a demonstration piece from me of a random face showing the ‘academic’ word for each stage, together with how I personally think of it.

Imprimatura

Killing the white of a blank canvas with an earth colour such as raw umber, then drawing in dilute ink

Grisaille, or Dead layer

Building up a negative mage with neutral colours - mixes of Paynes Grey, Raw Umber and White

First Colour Layers

Layer upon layer to build skin tones, using a limited colour palette - more on this under Materials page

Final Colour Layers

Using layers of higher chroma colours to complete picture. Again, more on this under Materials page