Monday, October 25, 2010

What my painting setup looks like


Here is a picture I took yesterday of my setup for painting. I put my painting on an old towel so I can wipe my brush on it, it is really very handy to do that. Also on the towel are brushes, glass rod for mixing paint in small palette wells, droppers for egg mixture and distilled water, container for brush rinsing water, old jelly jar with egg mixture, and (in a plastic baggie) the dish of shell gold paint. On the right are some of my pigments in jars, the porcelain palette with lots of tiny wells for mixing up many colors at once, yogurt cups for distilled water, and the drill I used to put some of the Halloween decorations together. In the background are bits and pieces of other projects: can of varnish for the chair I am refinishing, paper mache cat in progress, and a Halloween butterfly in progress sitting on top of jars of acrylic paint.

I am posting this picture because I think it is fun to see how people work at things. If I was interested in painting (or any new skill, really) but totally new to it I would not only be interested in seeing finished work and stages of progress, but also in seeing the setup for doing the craft as well as sources for tools and supplies.

I continue to make progress with my painting; yesterday I worked on the face mostly. I mixed various colors using white, raw sienna, raw umber, burnt umber, celadonite, red ochre, vermilliion, and yellow ochre. I could have made the skin look smoother but the original showed so many hatch lines and I wanted to keep close to the original style.

4 comments:

standgale said...

Wow, your picture is looking amazing - very similar to the original :)

Anonymous said...

I am new to your blog and love it! Thank you for showing us the background of your techniques. One question I had was reagrding the egg mixture. What is it and what is it used for?

Thank you!
Susan from Stonemarche

Kathy Storm said...

@ Susan: the egg mixture is used for tempera painting, like oil is the medium in oil painting. I mix it with the powdered pigments to make paint. See this post for how I make the tempera (egg mixture):

http://medievalartcraft.blogspot.com/2010/06/making-egg-tempera.html

Sarah Ketley said...

Oh wow.

This is one of my favorite period paintings!!! i love it.

Well done. I wish i was as gifted as you.

keep up the great work