ghostkitten: Renaissance Painting Techinique

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Renaissance Painting Techinique

I have been learning Renaissance/ Old master oil painting techniques. This is my first painting using these new skills. This is a raw umber and white tonal study of a classic sculpture. The intention was to practice blending to create smooth transitions between light and dark. I also was focusing creating the soft edges; so that the figure immerges from the background rather than sitting on top of it. This painting required many layers of paint and a lot of patience. Below you can see some images of the work in progress.

After drawing the outline of the sculpture in pencil, I coated the canvas with a glaze of Old Holland raw umber and walnut oil. I then used a cotton rag, to wipe out the lighter shades. This gave me a tonal map to refer to as I continued to paint.

I then mixed 9 shades between raw umber and white on my palette. I would start by glazing over the area I was about to paint using raw umber and walnut oil. I would let the glaze be thicker in the shadows and thinner in the highlights. Next, I would paint in the form with the dark to light tones. I used a big soft brush to help blend the tones together smoothly. Many areas were painted 3 separate times to refine the shading and the lines of the form.