I like to start multiple paintings at once so I can burn a few in a emotional fit and the last one standing is able to claim it's painting rights to the thunderdome. AKA my studio.
Firstly, I got oil paints. Yay! However, I have a small child so I am forbidding any and all kinds of 'mineral spirits' and toxic mediums in the hizzy house. Sooooo I use lots of different mediums! Mostly bodied linseed oil, walnut oil, and spike oil for cleaning my palette and brushes. These are still hazardous and just because they are natural does not make them safe to drink, but it does make them a helluva lot safer to slowly inhale over time than OMS/MS. I think I will make a post on how I keep OMS and MS out of my painting and where I get the various oils/mediums I paint with.
The sketch that started this madness.
So I found this Bhaisajyaguru, AKA Lapis Lazuli Buddha. One of the only men or women said to attain enlightenment upon death. The Bhaisajyaguru took 12 vows in worldly form, and in order to spead this awesome story and keep it alive I have started (and finished some of) 12 paintings, each one representing a vow.
Here's the vow that goes with this sketch: "I vow that I shall grant by means of boundless wisdom, all beings with the inexhaustible things that they require, and relieving them from all pains and guilt resulting from materialistic desires. Although clothing, food, accommodation and transport are essentials, it should be utilised wisely as well. Besides self-consumption, the remaining should be generously shared with the community so that all could live harmoniously together."
The sketch has been transferred to a canvas. I transfer my sketches by covering the back of the paper in heavy bodied charcoal, taping it to the canvas, and then tracing my sketch onto the canvas. What is transferred are the basic lines I need to build the shading back up using paints.
Whether the painting is oils or acrylics, I like to start with an acrylic underpainting (fancy art word is impasto? I think?) to give me some depth as well as some direction. I am still learning colors and in the past have gone CRAZY with them so it helps to really restrict my palette because it will not stay that way. :P
I then add layers of white paint where I can, or where I wish the painting to be 'illuminated'. I learned this from Amanda Sage's workshop at COsM 'Painting with light'. This is part of the 'mische technique' painting that has been done for hundreds of years. This is what gives most rennaissance paintings the illusion they have been illuminated from within the painting.
Sometimes I will use white casien,but I mostly use white acrylic. Why you ask? Well, because acrylic will literally LIFT casien. So any and all hard work you did with casien will be removed if you paint over it with acrylics. Once you go casien, you can ONLY paint with oils afterward. Otherwise you hard work is for naught. Case in point:
dramatically plays goodbye horses
ANYWAYS
So there's the acrylic. Safe. Untouched. Not going to be effed up.
And here it is after the 'glazes' have been added. The 'glazes' can be done in either oils or acrylics, it is basically a thinned out pigment placed over multiple layers of white, again to keep the optical illusion of depth and dimension in the painting. There are also all over glazes, which I used here:
The all over glaze of yellow (oil) adds to the blue acrylic underpainting and gives everything a nice earthy green feel to it. This is the first layer of my oil painting, but there are already 2 layers of paint under this.
More white! Illuminate it all!
This is as far as I have gotten on the oils for this one, and its been months. I'm so relieved I deleted my fb and no longer feel pressure to create just for social media 'likes'.
Here is the final one that's all finished!
" I vow that my body shall shine as beams of brilliant light on this infinite and boundless world, showering on all beings, getting rid of their ignorance and worries with my teachings. May all beings be like me, with a perfect status and character, upright mind and soul, and finally attaining enlightenment like the Buddha."
This one was painted for a friend who lost his father recently. I wanted him to remember that he is not alone in his grief, we all walk by each other in the dark, and the is awesome simply for the fact that our differences are not illuminated. We are all the same in the dark.
The crystal one will be sacrificed in the next new moon bonfire along with a few other paintings.....because that was my first ever time painting crystals and I am unhappy with it. I hope to appease the muses with my gifts. as well as a few other large paintings I started and have NO IDEA where to go with them....they are sick paintings. I am unsure if I have the technology to make them well again.
