Sunday 13 December 2009

Glazing Pears

Have been rather busy with some freelance work and making things for Christmas of late, so not much work to blog here I’m afraid. However, I finished off the single pears this afternoon so I thought I’d take a few photos of how I do the glazing stage.

Here I’ve got the four colours I want to glaze with and a small pot of oil. Each of the colours is transparent, not opaque (if it doesn’t tell you on the tube you can look up the brand you’re using on the internet, or it’ll usually tell you in an art materials catalogue). To start I’ve mixed each of the colours with a little of the oil…

Next I paint over the area I want to glaze with a thin layer of pure oil, this helps blending and gives you an even finish as you work.

Not brilliantly clear this photo (and sorry it’s a different pear…) but here I’ve just dabbed on the colours I want quite crudely, a spot here and there. Then using a clean dry brush you lightly pull the paint around on the surface, working around the spots of different colour you’ve added. Clean and dry the brush VERY frequently to avoid turning the colours to mud, but don’t be afraid of mixing them in certain areas. In the case of these pears taking the green into the red gave a lovely bruised effect on the skin.

A final pear with the glaze all blended together…In this instance I’m just using one layer of glazing, but you can use as many as you like. The only things to remember are…let each layer dry fully before painting the next, and use the paint thinly…the whole point is to trap the pigment within the oil and get a magical optical blending of colour…think of the way light travels through a piece of amber and aim for that :)

4 comments:

Lorna said...

mmm ... delicious!

Unknown said...

Thanks Lorna :) x

SueC said...

Do you know what? Now you've explained it to me using the amber analogy---I finally get it., Doh

Unknown said...

:) Good x :)

It’s definitely something worth playing with. A good experiment might be to paint a small flower painting all in light grey and then glaze several layers over the top to build up the colours slowly.

Basically that’s the way I did the older figurative paintings…and the way I’m doing the one of Jack on the wall. Grey underpainting, a layer of glaze. Work in opaque highlights (that is, paint normally using thick paint on the lighter areas) – repeat the glazing and highlights until you’re happy…you can get wonderful depth, especially in the shadows when painting that way and it would translate to something like, light shining through a petal or the shine on a leather shoe very well.

All painting is illusion and glazing is a very useful trick to have in your magicians hat ;)