This is a very basic block in for my Spanish Civil War painting. All of my paintings go through this stage. Here I'm using all cool earth tones, over a cool ground. I'm thinking very basically about general large tones and values. Everything is essentially two values, one being the light middle-tone, the other being a dark half-tone.
This stage always gives me anxiety because before getting my education this was about as far as I could get before being completely in the dark on how to proceed. I understand the desire a lot of painters have in wanting to get through this stage as quickly as possible, or skip it entirely if you're able.
But I think this stage is critical in some ways for as difficult as it may be to stay in, because it allows for the consideration of the whole in different aspects than from drawing. It gives me the chance to compose in color, to set myself up for juggling the harmonies that will help guide the composition.
Here is where the designing really starts for me. Going from line to color and value can alter the relationships of things and so there's the struggle of trying to be flexible, while not letting it derail me. I did more than one color study, but here is when I can start to specifically visualize how I'm going to plot my color relationships. Every little character has to be dressed, which means it has to look natural while still being designed.
For this painting I'm tackling it in groups. Every group connects to every other group as far as colors go in one way or another. I feel that if I can do it without making it look obvious, it will help to unify the work. Thankfully, the further back you go in history, the more prominent earth tones become, especially in times of war.
With the block-in done, I had to sit down and reorganize my references, and break everything down into sections. As I work through more layers in this painting, I'm collecting a substantial amount of references, so keeping them all organized has really helped me gain more focus. It also makes working much easier as I don't want to have to stop for very long and go digging for reference material when I could be painting.
So the first pass is done! Now only a million more to go. Another blog about the second and third layers will be up as soon as I get through the second and third layers... But just to give you an idea I've included a shot here below, with the two figures in the foreground in the second stage, compared to the nearly indecipherable blobs behind them.
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| "Those blob creatures are coming right for us!" |
