Joan of Arc: Part 3 Color

William O'Connor

As promised I am still working on my very large St. Joan painting when I find the time.  Above is the most recent phase up to this date in the process.

This phase is my underpainting stage.  Below you can see the process of laying on the paint.  I begin with a tonal painting of acrylic.  I chose acrylic because of the sheer square footage of surface and the drying time and fumes that would be created by this stage in oil.  Once I am satisfied with the forms I're created of positive and negative shapes I can begin separating some of the objects into colors. At this point I switch into oil.  The difficulty is to know when to switch, because once you start with oil you can't go back to acrylic.  This process is fairly quick, scrubbing in shapes and forms of color.  I'm not concerned about detail.  This is still the same technique that I was taught as a student.  My teacher used the analogy of a sculptor and a block of stone.  Work the whole painting at the same time, bring it into focus slowly. That old adage of the sculpture being locked inside the marble and its up to the sculptor to remove the unnecessary parts.  This is more additive than marble carving, but the theory is the same.  I can picture what it will look like, I just have to put all the brush strokes in the right places in the right order.

Enjoy

WOC