Wedding
Demo
I. Time to paint a wedding party! Using different photos as reference material, I begin with creating a drawing of the entire composition. I assemble different parts of the source images (people, background and furniture) in a way I find pleasing and expressive. This time I wanted a diagonal and dynamic composition in order to express the joyous and festive atmosphere. What are they laughing at? No idea! Maybe their future happiness.
Pleased with the drawing I choose to transfer it more or less mechanically to a large canvas primed with a middle tone warm grey hue. This is done by gridding the drawing and the canvas in a similar manner – same proportions, but different scales. Then one basically copies square after square. (The drawing shown above was a preliminary drawing where I just worked out the composition. The drawing traced basically got ruined in the gridding process.)
II. For some reason I have a vision to paint in a more impressionistic manner than I usually do. I imagine something like a Renoir, but with a limited palette (although this time I've included Ultramarine Blue in my usual palette of Titanium White, Mars Black, Yellow Ochre and English Red). Therefore I begin the actual painting in a way I seldom do, concentrating on color more than on value. Instead of sculpting the forms with a more or less monochromatic underpainting, I lay down broad washes of transparent color, concentrating on large, flat masses. At this stage it should look almost like a watercolor or a cartoon.
Of course I can't resist the temptation of sneaking in a self portrait (plus my better half) in the background.
III. Eventually I start using more opaque paint and move on to the mandatory ugly stages all paintings seem to go through. Everything you do makes you scream “I'm ruining it, I'm ruining it!” A lot of things are bothering me here. The way I started off seems like a huge mistake now. I should have chosen a monochrome underpainting concentrating on value instead of color. This is not a painting about color at all. The color range is on the contrary extremely limited, making value all the more important.
Same thing with temperature. Right now the painting is taking on a warm and brownish tone that's worrying me. Of course, the scene is lit by warm artificial lights, but if I'm not careful the painting will start to look muddy in a second. The real problem is this: I have no idea what I'm doing. A painting like this is too complex to start slapping the color on without any thought, which was basically what I did. So I'm reinventing the wheel here. Again. I have no one and nothing to blame, except myself and a lack of proper planning. Oh, well. Improvising is a proven method too.
IV. Some more opaque paint and more transparent layers too. Layers upon layers, to be honest. I have no method here. I just follow my instincts and do what the painting tells me to do. Multiple glazes seems like the way to go, little by little adjusting the values and temperatures I should have established more or less from the start. Now, due to the orange tint of the whole mess, I try to overemphasize the cool colors and push the neutral colors over to the cool side. It looks awful as I do it, but I'm pretty sure it will make sense in the end.
The warmth of the scene is still worrying, but soon the worst is over and the touches I make start to actually seem productive (instead of destructive) again. The ugly stages are kind of like the ego death of the painting. It may seem ugly and destructive, but it's because something far greater has to take over. Also something more intuitive. Just trust what's happening and don't give up. After all, a painting has to look good only once – when it's finished!
V. And here it almost is! Finished, that is. Some velaturas (glazes or scumbles with white in the mix) here and there did their job making the cool tones more prominent, thus balancing the overall temperature scheme of the scene. What's left here is basically just some finishing highlights and details, plus some more work on the faces.
VI. Here is the finished thing, framed with some raw boards, which I tinted "dirty" with black paint on a rag. Unfortunately the lighting is a little worse here, making the colors appear warmer than they are. They are more true to life in the image above. This photo was taken in the exhibition hall, right before the painting slipped out of my hands.