Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 9)

9

I will have to delay my work on the painting for a short while. I want to use the panel-- in its present, unfinished state -- in an exhibition (and tempera painting demonstration) at Gainesville State College, Georgia. This current photo reflects continued progress to refine the local colors of the tubes and other objects as they gradually evolve from the monochrome underpainting that defined basic volumes and space. When I resume work on the panel, I'll articulate further distinctions of the objects in the pile, and move from washes and glazes into more linear brushwork and hatching.
See you in about a month...

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 8)

8

Unfortunately, not a lot of time to paint today, but I decided to use my limited time in the studio to begin giving the tubes their "indigenous" colors. Some of the tubes are old and grubby, mingling all the colors from Ole's handling of them and transmogrifying into a kind of mongrel brown. I'll get to that as a last touch, though.

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 7)

7

Still working to bring depth and volume to the rendering, I alternate between adding light and dark washes. The red underpainting peeks through a little more strongly than I'll want in the end, but you can see how it imbues a warm glow to the cooler grays and browns that will predominate the colors in the finished painting.

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 6)

6

I used tints of ivory black and zinc white to begin giving color to the metal tubes of oil paint and to cool the shadows they cast on the work table. The same color is in the floor and wall beyond the table. A little green earth is washed over the round glass palette, and I'm using a greenish raw umber to continue modeling the details in the big pile.

Detail

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 5)

5

I've started applying egg tempera washes over the casein underpainting. First, however, I sized the casein work with a couple of layers of dilute egg yolk wash, unpigmented. Next, I laid down a loose glaze of raw sienna (a golden brown variety). I then modeled some of the middle values in darker but still transparent raw sienna and verdaccio giallo. Finally, I reinforced the lighter values with buff titanium (a light tan-hued white pigment.) I'll bring up the lights a little more strongly and start applying washes of grays, blues, and greens over the composition. I'll push toward more natural colors yet try to keep the treatment a little soft-edged, brushy, and transparent at this early stage.

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 4)

4

The painting after more modeling in Venetian red, ivory black, and titanium white washes.

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 3)

3

I'm starting to shape the tubes of paint in the picture with reinforcing washes of ivory black and Venetian red, still in casein. I want to bring out their overlapping crumpled forms, of course, but also try to impart a sense of spatial recession by varying the value contrasts from front of table to back. I'll take this stage of the process a good bit farther, remaining essentially monochromatic, as I resolve the underpainting before moving on to naturalistic colors.

Detail

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 2)

2

I finished working over all the chalk transfer with diluted black casein. I really just wanted to establish the contours of this jumble of forms. Later, I'll model the range of lights and darks. On top of my linear outline I washed a couple of passes of Venetian red casein.

Olsen's Palette (work in progress, 1)

1

This is a "still life" from a corner of Richard Olsen's studio: the painter's work table and palette. My panel is a commercially prepared support, rabbitskin-glue gesso on Duron Masonite. It was made by an Athens, GA based company, Realgesso, and given to me by them to try out. (Thanks, Howard!) It's a small one, 8 x 10 inches. This first photo shows the initial processes in my painting technique. The faint red outlines are red chalk transfers from my drawing study. On top of that are contours in black casein wash that strengthen the chalk lines.