These are days, charcoal sketch

I’m doing a bit of a complicated piece. Three kids together with lots of bright lights and shadows around them. When I do something more complex – especially with subjects I actually know – I like to sketch it out in charcoal. I do like to do a grid, but all I do is lay in guides in GIMP (free, Photoshop-like app for Linux) at the vertical and horizontal halves. Then I roughly guesstimate the lines on the canvas. No measuring. Then, using that rough guide, I draw.

Drawing skills are extremely important. Tracing does not develop your drawing ability. Only your tracing ability. If you want to draw better, then draw. I personally would like to paint better, but I already know how to draw. So I DO draw, then I paint. Sometimes I draw directly in paint. Well, usually I do; this is the second of these 7 paintings to have a charcoal drawing (“Summers End” was the other one). Take a look – all of the other drawings were done in paint, directly on canvas.

In case you didn’t know, oil paints don’t cover up graphite all that well. I’m going to spray fixative on the charcoal under-drawing and let it dry for a day so I can begin laying in paint tomorrow.

However, let it be said that this is still an experiment. I’ve been toying with a more limited palette. I think this is painting #7. I’ve got 93 to go before I’ve burned my first 100 “bad paintings.” Maybe then I can stop impersonating an artist and actually claim to be one? I don’t know. This, as with so many other things, becomes such a rabbit hole that I sometimes wonder what in the high holy hell I’m doing.

My typical palette:

• Titanium white (tried flake white but it’s REALLY stiff)
• Cad yellow light
• Alizarin crimson
• Ultramarine blue
• Burnt sienna
• Ivory black

So that’s about it. I will sometimes pull in Cad Yellow Medium, Cad Red Medium, pthalo blue, Payne’s gray, or yellow ochre. This gives me a full “split complement” palette plus a bit more in the earth colors. I’ve been staying away from the umbers because I ALWAYS end up making mud with them. They’ll probably be the subject of a future experiment.

“These Are Days,” or maybe “What They Don’t Know.” 9″ x 12″ on canvas board. Charcoal preparation for an oil painting. (I’ve made slight changes since I took this picture, but you’ll see that as I lay in painting). The torsos are all a little long but I like that. I see this painting as the end of a day of play, three friends bathed in partial but strong evening sun, long days giving way to winter, soon. By extension, the carefree days of their youth seem long and infinite to them, knowing nothing about what life has in store for them.