Painting a small nude

Most of the work my on-line audience sees from me is "Ala Prima". This means work done "all at once" or in a short painting session. I rather consider Ala Prima work to be my bread and butter stuff. It's a great way to learn because you can do a lot in a short while. The brush strokes are retained and the painting looks "fresh". But while this is the work most often visible from me on line, there is a vast difference between this work and my, well, high end, work. I say, high end, because I generally spend many weeks on one of these and can hardly afford to sell them at EBay prices.

Essentially, I'm a classical realist painter. I fell in love with painters like Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Georges de La Tour and many of the Dutch painters while growing up. It's the work I aspire to. Ah well..."aspire" is the word.

Anyway, today's lesson is a small piece that I did as a study for a larger "high end" piece I plan to do. I was inspired by Jacob Collins' "Lisa". I was looking for a link to this painting earlier and if I find one, I'll put it in here. I chose my favorite model "A" for this piece and she posed in a variety of positions. I chose this layout because it's pretty similar to "Lisa", although somewhat in reverse.

I started by transfering a small sketch to a piece of canvas mounted on board. Instead of working the shadows in the way I generally do on an Ala Prima, I covered the entire piece with an "imprimatura" or tone of burnt umber oil paint. "A" is outlined with a bit of acrylic to allow her to show through the imprimatura.

In the next step, I start removing or pulling out the highlights with a brush dipped in mineral spirits. This is tricky step for those not acquinted with this style of underpainting. However, if you can master it, it brings great rewards. I use very soft brushes for this if I want to really refine the underpainting. However, for this study, I kept things simple.

In the next step, I started working in color. I used a little burnt umber + yellow ochre and white for some of the mid tones. I also used a mixture of burnt umber, raw umber and alizarin crimson to get in the turning edges on the figure.

You can see these steps taking form in the image below. Highlights were mostly a bit of Naples Yellow and white. Where the flesh reflected flesh, there were some orangey/red tones and I put these down in the transitional areas. Some of her flesh had pinkish hues where it turned. This was achieved with the same mix as highlights but with a bit of Alazarin Crimson mixed in. I use Maroger as a glazing medium. It allows for long painting sessions and although this wasn't that long a session it still allowed a bit of glazing toward the end.

Here I also started to work in the drapery. I kept it simple but tried to keep the movement of the cloth in the same rythym as the figure. Obviously "A's" face is not the most important part of this painting and so I kept that simple as well. In the last stage, I smoothed transitions and added more highlights to a few places. I also put a nice glow on her hip with some cadmium orange mixed with Alizarin Crimson (love that stuff - fugitive albeit).

Obviously, this is not a polished painting and still falls in the category of "ala prima". But it is a bit more finished than some of my pieces displayed here. I'll be doing some lessons on more layered/polished pieces from time to time, so stay tuned. Don't forget to check out my daily painting blog also!

"Morning Dreams"

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