Tea with Christy - drawing and block in

Here is where we left our "colorful" painting in the last post with Mars Black sketched onto a semi-white background. Some of the previous orange toning from the "before" shows through slightly, but not enough to worry about. Usually, my process is more of a traditional French impressionist style, so this painting will be a stretch goal for me. Who knows what influence it will have on future paintings?

Oh my goodness, I'm not sure if this much fun is legal. Look at these luscious colors, straight out of their tubes. Following a technique used by artist Karen Mathison Schmidt, I used acrylics to establish the "bones" of an oil painting. Each one was thinned a little with a glazing medium. Here they are: Indian Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Phthalo Turquoise, Quinacridone Magenta, Dioxazine Purple, and Brilliant Yellow Green.

The tablecloth is a traditional blue and white picnic checkered pattern, so I drew the crosshair lines to establish the x and y axis so the lines wouldn't go wonky. Trying not to get too technical here, but I have been a technical writer for a l-o-o-o-ng time, so it's hard to resist. I should start a one person campaign to have "wonky" added to technical dictionaries. 

This acrylic under painting will dry in about 20 minutes and then I'll start layering local color over it. Local color is more the color of the actual objects themselves. Hopefully, some of these delicious glazed colors will peek through.