Prokopenko Drawing Black20 Payment Plan

By Pavel Sokov

Setup and Training Stages

Earlier I first a painting, I similar to come upward with a couple of thumbnails to nail downwardly the composition. I do these from imagination commonly. So in these ones, I played with the placement of the skull, the direction of the lighting, and the orientation of the sheet. After coming up with these 4 thumbnail sketches, I got kind of a better idea of what I really desire from my painting.

Too, it sort of helps to accept a thumbnail completed to use as reference when I starting time my painting considering if I don't have anything to look at it'south possible that when I outset from scratch on my canvas, my subject field volition end upward besides big, or even worse, run off the page or something.

Composition is a flake of a feeling thing along with some guidelines. It's not like strong rules that you must follow. Then having said that, I retrieve I like sketch one and 3 the nigh.

Y'all know, since the color temperature plays such a big function, I digitally painted this sketch with some invented color earlier actually making the setup, just to give an idea of what kind of mood this painting would be. And it besides gave me an opportunity to programme some of the painting methods and steps that I'll apply in the actual painting process.

Okay, so with the sketches in listen, permit's put together the setup that I will paint from today.

Execution of the painting

So a big challenge to overcome here with this skull is that I want to paint it in the dark for a more dramatic and moody atmosphere since it'due south Halloween and all, but at the same fourth dimension, I want myself and my easel to be in the light and so I tin can see and we tin make this video.

Sadly, the candle doesn't provide a stiff enough calorie-free during the day, so nosotros're going to use a warm lamp instead.

Since we don't want to burn the house downwardly though by lighting that black box on fire, I recall our candle shouldn't exist lit at the beginning stages of the painting.

I'm using a portable paintbox today that makes it user-friendly for me to paint anywhere I go.

For my brushes, I program to use a lot of bristles considering I want to load this painting upwards with a lot of thick paint, just I also packed a few softer brushes to get some soft edges in at that place besides.

As my painting surface today, I am using an 11×xiv linen panel. It's actually one of my favorite sizes for life paintings.

I paint with a few different brands of oil paint, only in that location's no need to name them or be concerned with what they are. What's really important almost that is that they're professional grade and they're not the educatee grade which are very difficult to paint with. Information technology merely doesn't piece of work, it'southward like toothpaste, and so only don't fifty-fifty get it.

Okay, allow'due south squeeze out our paint. And don't exist agape to use a lot. For the longest time, I've been so shy with squeezing out my paint. Information technology's been taking me years to paint thicket and thicker, and I gotta tell you, if you can skip all these years of being shy and just get straight into information technology and load up a lot of paint, it will salvage y'all a lot of trouble.

On my palette today we take:

Titanium White, Warm White, Cadmium Yellow Light, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Cadmium Yellow Orange,Yellow Ochre,Transparent Yellow Oxide, Cadmium Red, Transparent Red Oxide, Transparent Brown Oxide, Raw Umber, Alizarin Carmine, and Cobalt Blueish.

Underpainting and Drawing Stage

The very first thing I like to do when starting a painting is to tint the canvas. But you have to select your tinting color wisely, because it's going to provide the underlying temperature to the whole piece. I oftentimes let this initial tint testify through all the manner to the end of the painting, particularly in the shadows.

In this case we accept a very warm low-cal on our subject so nosotros can wait our painting to be pretty warm. I'one thousand going to tint this canvas with that in mind by using something really warm like transparent ruby-red oxide, and I will mix information technology with a bit of Cadmium Yellow Medium in the surface area where the candle volition go because later, all this warm underpainting should give this skull a nice inner glow. I am diluting my paint with gamsol here when I do my initial washes, considering makes the paint behave like a watercolor, which is perfect for making a stain.

Cartoon the Lay-in

Okay, so at present that our canvas is tinted, we tin start to draw our linear lay-in on top of our stain. My favorite tool to do that with is actually a difficult bristle castor. The reason why is that those stiff hairs, they let me to become nice direct lines which are the verbal type of lines that I find helpful at this stage to simplify the contours of everything that I'm drawing and to find those big shapes.

Don't worry, we're going to complicate these lines later when we go to paint them!

As yous draw your lay-in, don't forget to focus on the big shapes and the proportions of what yous're drawing. Don't get carried abroad on details and things like that because it's fashion too early at this stage. Simplify everything to its most basic elements. Observe the big shapes and don't heed the secondary forms for at present. It also kind of helps to keep your horizon line in mind when you draw your lay-in. For example, in my case, I'chiliad sitting below the skull and looking up at it.

You have to ask yourself, are you looking up at the your set-up, or are yous looking down at information technology? And, whatsoever the answer is, y'all take to design your lines with that in mind.

So if you're noticing that your drawing is off at this stage, don't be shy to move lines around until you go information technology correct. Trust me, you lot're gonna be saving yourself a lot of headaches if you fix things at this early stage than if you try to fix them after when you have a lot of opaque paint downwards on your painting.

So correct now I'g filling in the dark shapes on my underpainting because I find that it helps me see my mistakes amend when I fill in the big dark shapes. With these night shapes filled in, information technology's much easier to judge the distances on your drawing.

Opaque Painting Stage

At this point I often similar to take a kneadable eraser, or more oft a napkin, and rub out the lightest areas. This helps me constitute the light source a lot sooner before I fifty-fifty lay down the opaque pigment. Simply make sure to do this before your stain is dry, or else you won't be able to do information technology anymore. You unremarkably take about 10 minutes max depending on your surface earlier your wash dries, so exist careful.

My goal hither is to establish the large values, shapes and color temperatures every bit before long equally I can, so to do that, I am going to embrace the entire skull with some opaque paint, aiming primarily to tell the story of the lighting that'due south hitting our skull. I am thinking a lot about color temperature. Our primary lite is warm, so I'1000 mindful that my the parts that are in the light are going to stay warm. Often times, students want to lighten an area, and so they take hold of a agglomeration of white. White is actually the coldest color, and so the result of that is that the value of the area goes up and information technology does go lighter, only at the same fourth dimension, the temperature goes a lot colder.

This is actually bully if your subject is in a common cold calorie-free, similar perhaps a North lighting window. But in our case, our subject is in a warm calorie-free, and then that's no skilful for us. When yous desire to lighten an area that's in the light, consider using a color to lighten that area. In this case, to lighten my mixtures, I'm going to include some cadmium yellow medium, cadmium yellowish, and transparent yellow oxide in my calorie-free mixtures to keep information technology warm. But conversely, if you want to darken an expanse, a lot of students accomplish for the black to darken things, and that creates a cold mixture as well. Try concealment a shadow with a warm nighttime. Something like transparent red oxide, transparent brown oxide, or alizarin crimson.

While you're putting downwardly that initial opaque pigment, a good principle to work by is to paint the lights thicker and the shadows a footling flake thinner. So that means y'all can't be agape to lay down some serious paint in the lights. If you continue the shadows more sparse and apartment, and then the lights are going to experience more luminous in comparison. And I also love to let my warm underpainting show through in places in the shadows.

When yous have dramatic lighting like this, you are leap to see a lot of contrast. Let's brand sense of all of it this way:

Since nearly of our subject field is lit, make sure that the amount of values you employ in lights is higher than in the shadows. In other terms, brand the shadows more than flat and take less values, similar you could make the shadows but ane value so that information technology looks a lot simpler than your halftones and your lights. As a upshot, the shadows will have less information in it than the parts that are lit.

I am thinking of the skull as an egg, with the closest part receiving the most low-cal, and the parts further abroad receiving the least amount of light. If the underlying "egg" of the skull reads well, so yous are gonna be in good shape!

Our halftones are the virtually chromatic and the most information-dense parts. So in our case they are going to be the warmest parts of the skull. The lightest lights are pretty done out, but they're however warm.

Finishing Stage

To see the finishing touches make sure to watch the video below.

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Source: https://stanprokopenko.tumblr.com/page/21

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