Starting out with handmade gesso panels, made with traditional materials, and sanded many times to achieve a porcelain finish to work on. With a very thin coat of umber and walnut oil rubbed on with a rag and left to dry.
More about traditional gesso making here.
These handmade gesso boards are a dream to work on in oil pencil, the pencils glide on and can be erased if needed with ease, shading is a dream, and building depth is also wonderful.
I work up from line work and shapes, building the form slowly, blocking in the larger shapes.
After the larger shapes have had some shading on and I have evaluated the rough form, I can carry on working around the piece to fill in more depth and really bring the drawing to life.
I loved the drawing of this ribbon so much that I decided to transfer this to oil painting. I wanted to work on paper this time and gave a thick coat of watercolour paper a light coat of my traditional gesso ready for the underpainting.
The underpainting glided on really well to the gesso on paper and I was able to work up the underpainting really well in very thin layers. I sed a mixture of Paynes grey and flake white.
The ultramarine blue was glazed over the underpainting, again in thin layers. I worked into the shadows with a little burnt umber.
I am really happy with the finish of this ribbon and the depth I was able to create.
This is one of my favourite pictures from this project, being able to see the layers of the piece and see the colour is worked into the underpainting. Potentially might add a print to my shop of this.