This week I am happy to share my progress on the final San Marco Horses oil painting with you.
In the completed underpainting you can see the window area’s circle pattern for the first time (this was a time consuming process that I chose to ignore for the preparatory drawing and color sketch stages).
To start, I toned a 20×16 inch wood panel with Mars Yellow and Burnt Umber oil paints to resemble a sun-baked wall in Venice. Then I transfered the drawing and designated the shadow areas with thinned Burnt Umber. Finally, I glazed the window panes with Ultramarine Blue.
Although I glazed the window panes with blue straight from the tube, it is less saturated because of the brown tone underneath. As I complete the painting, I will decide whether to desaturate the blue more.
In the next stage of the painting, I will start sculpting the forms with the approximate final colors. Throughout the process, I will refer to the previous color sketches and preparatory drawing (see below) to guide my decisions. You can already see that I chose to tone down the underpainting (which will show through on the left of the final painting), because I felt in the color sketches that the background was fighting too much with the featured horses.
I hope you will keep checking back to watch as the painting progresses.
What do you think?
I appreciate your thoughts and constructive criticisms.
