This small still
life really did start out as “finger painting”.
I often start a painting by putting down a colored gesso as
my base to paint on, usually orange. But
in this case I used a light wash of red oil paint, thinned out with some
odorless mineral spirits. To do this, be
careful to not get the paint so diluted that it actually runs, just thin enough
to lift off easily. The panel I used is
an Ampersand gessobord which is ready to paint on.
I covered the whole panel with a light coat of
red, then used a soft cloth over my finger and pulled off the shape of the
glass and bottle, especially the high light areas. After that I mixed up a slightly thicker blue
to put in the dark outlines and shadows, still mainly using my fingers and a
soft cloth.
With this paint
being thin and wet it is easy to make corrections to shapes at this time, and
really what I am looking for at this point is the over all masses of the
composition.
I let that dry
over night and the next day finished the painting, this time using a brush and
thicker layers of paint.
Mary
