Bloody Mary [Model: Helga]
The concept
I always adore Charles Reid’s watercolor style. I watched 2 of his tutorial DVDs: one for flowers and the other for portrait, and understood his approach to painting watercolor; then I had this idea of imitating his style with oil painting, so I tried this concept at the last figure painting class for this semester, and made this oil sketch in 2 hours, imitating watercolor style.
On Charles Reid’s website biography page: http://www.charlesreidart.com/bio.h…
This introduction succinctly summarized his great skill and art: “Charles Reid has long been considered a master of the medium of watercolor. His paintings are fresh and spontaneous, displaying his profound understanding of light and color and expert drawing ability. The viewer is immediately drawn into his rich compositions. His figures are beautifully rendered, in a simple, direct and natural, gestural manner that reveals his interest in painting the light as much as the person.”
I had the exact same understanding after I watched his tutorials. His expertise in drawing revealed itself in his contour outline of the subject he was painting, which gave the viewer a magnificent composition already! Then his rendering of light and color further fulfilled the viewer’s admiration with stunning beauty!
The footstep
First, I did the contour line drawing with charcoal, because I know graphite tends to come up to the surface of the oil paint. The second step of this approach is to apply fixative to fasten the charcoal, so it will not be smeared or removed by the linseed oil or the solvent. But I didn’t have the fixative with me, so the first disaster happened that night, the face and the figure were filled with smeared charcoal, I had to wipe them clean before going any further. (One may notice that the hands and feet were still blackened.)
The second difficulty was I couldn’t ‘splash’ any paint onto the canvas, as in the tutorial, Maestro’s action of splashing color onto the paper looked so ‘delicious’! The linseed oil was just too sticky to be shaken out off the brush. So I ‘dabbed’ instead. (The upper left area is where I dabbed with red paint.)
The title
I named this painting “Bloody Mary” with a little bit of history, but not any real historic reference. The model, Helga, posed for us 2 weeks ago, and I did a monochrome oil sketch to study the value of the skin tone. My classmate thought it looked like “Queen Victoria.”
Queen Victoria [Model: Helga]
Come to the last class painting, I named it “Queen Elizabeth” first; but after I dabbed the red background to the upper left corner, I changed it to “Bloody Mary”! – Appropriately, right?
PGL25th 