Work in progress: Untitled #2, day 2

Untitled #2 - work in progress, day 2

©2010 Caroline Roberts

The greys are blocked in now and color adjustment is underway. I carried out the overlay exercise below to check that the mixes are good and to see where I need to adjust hue or value. It's hard to judge the mixes, especially the hue, on the painting itself. If only color wasn't so relative!

After remixing a couple of colors - the grey-aqua mix is much too saturated and aqua for instance - I will repaint those areas and get the edges sharp. Each time I have to adjust a color the paint layer gets thicker and it gets harder to keep the surface smooth. Particularly as I get impatient and try to rework an area before it is fully dry. Hard to believe, but sometimes I have to actually wait for my acrylic paint to dry.

Each painting teaches me more about how my process needs to be and what my paintings are about. For a while I have wondered why I am so drawn to hard edges in my own work when I love soft, atmospheric brushwork in others' paintings. Working in these mid tones, with so many greys, it would be so easy to lose the color changes and the transparency illusion.

Color Overlay Exercise

I already have my eye on the next painting. Something else small (the one above is 24" by 24", which is small for me), I'm not ready to work on that huge crazy-detailed painting yet but it is my goal. A painting you could step into.

I'd love to hear what you think about this painting - do the overlays work for you? Are they interesting? I love them but that doesn't mean everyone shares my obsession with transparencies and overlays!