Learning to harness a rainbow
When I first started painting with acrylics at sixteen or so, I had a wide palette. I was using so many different pigments that I couldn’t possibly learn how to mix a specific color. I had too many pre-mixed options to choose from. Working this way, I knew little about each pigment’s capabilities and I knew less about making a composition of colors work together.
For a few years, I painted like this, fumbling along, but, at some point, I decided to limit my palette severely. In this painting for example, I used only titanium white, cadmium yellow, dioxazine purple, and quinacridone red and gold. I repeated this exercise with a few paintings, changing my palette each time, but always limiting it.
Today, my primary palette consists of titanium white, burnt umber, phthalo blue, cadmium yellow, and quinacridone red and gold.
Or rather, it did.
Recently, some secondary pigments have wormed their way into my daily spectrum. More and more, I’m using phthalo green and quinacridone magenta. The former disappoints me some in that it lacks the intensity of phthalo blue when applied pure. Its strength lies in the vibrancy of the greens it can create and, for that, I adore it. As for the latter, I am irrationally devoted to it. Its intensity is similar to phthalo blue’s, making it the only pigment that can compare to the blue in the warm colors.
Jim’s portrait has a lot of both of these pigments in it, and especially the phthalo green. When I asked him what his favorite color is during our interview, he described it as the color of sunlight shining through new maple leaves. I loved his answer, for its poetry and also because that has always been one of my favorite colors, just as he described it!
A first wash of color.
Building up some layers.
I thought that one way to evoke the light-through-leaves look would be to paint the circles of light that happen in a photo of sunlight coming through leaves (due to how the camera lens processes direct light).
I got a little lost in this idea.
But eventually found my way again.
The home stretch.
Gwenn Seemel
Jim (Don’t Forget Your Longboat And Ax)
2007
acrylic on canvas
30 x 24 inches
(detail below)
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CATEGORIES: - Process images - Practice -
