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  • May 25, 2016 at 4:21 am #994119
    Ellis Ammons
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        Heya!
        I’ve got some red flowers I’m painting and I thought it would be a good idea to make a green grisaille. To help control the intensity of the red. But the more I think about it the more I think it’s not going to work. I’m starting to think it’s going to take so many glazes to bring it around to red it will be ridiculous.

        What do you guys think? Should I repaint what I’ve got so far or is this doable? Or maybe I should only do that back flower with the complementary color to help it recede more.

        The flower that I’ve done is supposed to be emerging from the dark but not to much darker.

        Thanks for any advice.

        Check out my work in the acrylics Hall of Fame Camellia WIP
        oil and acrylic paintings..

        May 25, 2016 at 4:09 pm #1252101
        Don Ketchek
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            It is very common to do underpaintings in the complementary colors to the final colors. However, I believe that most folks who use this technique will paint more directly over the underpainting, rather than glaze. Remember, underpaintings can be useful even when you don’t glaze. Many direct painters use them, too.

            Don

            May 25, 2016 at 4:19 pm #1252100
            WFMartin
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                There is actually a school of thought that claims that each color that in exists in the final painting should be painted with its exact complement as an underpainting.

                It has always appeared to be interesting to me, but I have never actually tried it. As Don has said, this method seems to be a bit more useful when using a more direct paint application over the underpainting, …..as opposed to glazing.

                wfmartin. My Blog "Creative Realism"...
                https://williamfmartin.blogspot.com

                May 25, 2016 at 4:45 pm #1252103
                Alan P. in OC
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                    I’m starting to think it’s going to take so many glazes to bring it around to red it will be ridiculous.

                    Then why use a transparent red, if you don’t have to? I would either use a more opaque red, or repaint the area that you (eventually) want red in grayscale.

                    I wouldn’t count on an underpainting to do anything but be a value map for my further layers. I know it’s done by some, but I’ve made the mistake of improperly preparing for future layers as you’ve done.

                    If you’re eventually going to use super-strong transparent colors in your painting, you want to take advantage of that early on and give them a light base-coat (as I’ve done in my latest painting in the taillight section; glazing transparent red over lead white).

                    May 25, 2016 at 6:01 pm #1252104
                    Hamburgefions
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                        I can’t see the reference you are painting from, but you should paint your light values much lighter.

                        This is what you painted:

                        This is how you could continue:

                        To achieve this layer(s):

                        If in the end, this red is too powerful, you can always glaze it down.

                        If you want a brilliant red in the final layer, you should paint white in the underlayer (if you hang on to this green underpainting). If you don’t use white, you ll have to paint over every green value with a red value. And as you mentionned: it could take many layers.

                        Mark.
                        http://mvc.exto.org/

                        May 25, 2016 at 6:38 pm #1252106
                        Ellis Ammons
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                            Thanks for the responses.

                            Guess I’ll wait for this to dry and do a little testing on that area.

                            I’m going to try glazing with semi-opaque red and if it gets to dark using semi-transparent white for darks and opaque white for lights to lighten it back up.

                            @hamburgefions: thanks for doing that. I was going to do a correcting layer to lighten it up a little. It was getting a little to difficult to get those veins in one layer. I don’t want that back flower to powerful though as I need it to give the painting some depth.

                            Check out my work in the acrylics Hall of Fame Camellia WIP
                            oil and acrylic paintings..

                            May 25, 2016 at 10:10 pm #1252107
                            Ellis Ammons
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                                This is my reference that I’m going with. It’s not the master untweaked photo. I free hand everything so don’t bother checking proportions. :_) And I’m blending it into the background more than the reference.

                                But this may give you guys a better idea of what I’m going for. The parts that are bright orange were the parts that I wasn’t going to use a complementary color under. I was going to paint that yellow and glaze red over that.

                                I might even buy a premixed orange to get some really powerful colors. I’m just using a limited pallete.

                                Check out my work in the acrylics Hall of Fame Camellia WIP
                                oil and acrylic paintings..

                                May 26, 2016 at 4:29 am #1252105
                                sabana
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                                    Ellis a grisaille(french) is grey or a neutral grey colour. If you have a complimentary colour grisaille it must be a greyed complimentary colour of the local colour.

                                    Grey the green as its much too polarized to be called a complimentary colour grisaille. :)

                                    May 26, 2016 at 7:48 am #1252102
                                    Anonymous

                                        I’ve got some red flowers I’m painting and I thought it would be a good idea to make a green grisaille. To help control the intensity of the red. But the more I think about it the more I think it’s not going to work. I’m starting to think it’s going to take so many glazes to bring it around to red it will be ridiculous.
                                        What do you guys think? Should I repaint what I’ve got so far or is this doable? Or maybe I should only do that back flower with the complementary color to help it recede more.

                                        I think that you can probably make it work.
                                        I would probably reduce the intensity of the glazing color itself.

                                        There are only two ways that an underpainting can influence the look of your final painting:

                                        1- part of the underpainting itself is left visible and showing, this is usually done in small patches or spots.
                                        2- layers or glazes applied over top of the underpainting are so transparent that the underpainting can be seen through the paint layer.

                                        I assume that you are going for the #2 effect. But to me, doing this with complementary color underpainting seems like a difficult way to approach fine tuning the final hue, and value, while reducing the intensity.

                                        May 26, 2016 at 8:53 am #1252108
                                        Ellis Ammons
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                                            Thanks for the advice.

                                            This thing worked pretty good for the stuff in shadow – the 2 little petals.

                                            I glazed with red to start with and it made everything waay to dark. So I wiped most of that off and it had stained the green to redish grey. I then glazed it with a semi transparent pink and it seems to be working towards red pretty quick.

                                            I put some ridges on the big pedal so that when I glaze the next layer it wont smooth out all my texture. Hopefully that will work to.

                                            Check out my work in the acrylics Hall of Fame Camellia WIP
                                            oil and acrylic paintings..

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