New Thoughts about Painting

Using A Grid as an Under-Painting

The watercolor on the the left is titled “The Fargo Blues” the Acrylic on canvas on the right is titled “City Scape 2010” I hope you enjoy these two paintings.

In the past I used a variety of under-paintings in my watercolors.  I decided to experiment with them in Acrylic.

These two paintings both employed a grid as an under-painting.  An under-painting   is simply overall design plan balanced in the simplest way possible tying the finished painting together.  In “The Fargo Blues”(left), a painting done using watercolor,  the gridded under-painting is more obvious due to the transparency of the medium.  In “Cityscape 2010”(right),a painting done with acrylic, the opaque paint can completely blocks out the grid.  As you can see, the different mediums with the grid technique can form a completely different look and feel to each painting.

There was a little surprise with my “Cityscape” under-painting.  To first step to starting this painting was to apply very thick gesso was applied with a piece of mat board in a grid like pattern.  Since the acrylic under-painting would be covered up,  I used intense color and smeared them on to the grid shapes.  Soon I realized I couldn’t see my pencil drawing.   So I redrew it using a sharpie marker instead.  I painted around the windows first and suddenly had very dramatic reflections.  My family was at the lake with me and they all started telling me not to cover “that” up. What do you think?