正文
還沒有完成的畫。這次上的課教的old masters' technique, 就是glazing. I found it goes against my spontaneous and intuitive way of working. You have to first paint a complete underpainting, using one color or a few colors, and then glaze thin layers of colors on it.
The problem is you have to wait until the previous layer is completely dry before you put on the next layer, otherwise the new color will mix with the old instead of sitting on top of it. The whole point of glazing is for the colors underneath to show through, thus building the richness of colors and achieving the unique transparent and luminous quality of an oil painting. You can see this kind of quality in many, many paintings from the old times. That's how they painted back then...until, I guess, the Impressionists came along and started painting directly onto canvas, alla prima.
Glazing is certainly a much slower way to paint. It's been 6 weeks and I have not been able to finish even one painting--I have 3 paintings in various stages. No wonder my patience is running thin and my interest is waning.
Plus so far all three paintings have been painted from photographs. I generally don't like to work from photos, especially in oil. Paintings done from photos just lack the freshness, energy, vitality, and the real three-dimensional quality compared to paintings done from life.
But I guess it's good to learn all kinds of techniques, be exposed to a lot of things, and experiment before determining which way works the best for you. And, although the paintings are progressing very slowly, I can see why they used this technique in the past. The paintings do have a very transparent and luminous quality that you don't get from painting directly.
So right now just have to grit my teeth and plug away.
thanks for sharing your book-making too :)