Before starting a painting I can spend hours, days, weeks, months, sometimes even years trying to find the right figure that will fulfill my imagination. This painting was a bit different, the figures were always there, I had to look in my imagination for all the amazing feelings I have towards them. Painting my amazing grandparents was a difficult task. Not only did I want it to be beautiful and incredible but I wanted to be able to express many amazing feelings and ideas i have of them.
Here are some of the steps I took before finishing one of my favorite works I’ve done so far:
1. Objects and clothing are an important part in my paintings, every time I paint someone or something I make sure to incorporate things that are important for that particular painting. In this case they are my grandparents and there are millions of things I could have included. After several days going around my head I finally decided to go for things that when I see I think of them. They’ve always had solid wood antic furniture with a tint of Bordeaux, so I had no doubt about that, actually the two chairs and the table with the white lace cloth (which my grandma always had) is what they have at the moment.
I made sure they dressed in their style. My grandpa wearing his traditional plane light shirt and slacks, which is the way I always picture him. My grandma with her colorful blouses (leopard design) and beautiful pearls on her neck and wrist.
2. When I had everything figured out I started to paint. As I always do, I did the outline and some important shades using Raw Umber acrylic paint (always looking more at shapes than the actual figure).
3. Once the acrylic paint is dried (which doesn’t take long), I started with the first oil layer (the Raw Umber-under layer). I usually do two or three layers of umber, but in this case I did four because I wanted to have more detail. In this stage is very important that whatever you are painting starts to look a lot like you want the final painting to look like without color.
4. After a couple of days, when the umber layer was dried to the touch, I started working a bit more on the background, adding color and a little more detail. Adding the correct flesh tone is very important. If the color is just a little off, it can make the subject look like a different one. To make this flesh tones I mixed red, blue, ochre, brown and white to make it lighter.
5. For this painting I did 3 color layers, but you can do as little as one or as many as you want. I waited until the painting was completely dry to the touch and I painted the “detail Layer”. This stage is when I applied little lines, specific detail and transparent color (specially reds and blues to the faces to make them come alive). To be able to make a color more transparent and to make it slide more easily, just add linseed oil to the paint.
6. Finally I waited for the painting to be dried to the touch again and put a thin layer of linseed oil, J.G. Vibert painting medium, and tempentine to make the painting look more uniform.
There are many personal sentimental values in this painting. I decided to add three eggs because my grandma have always collected porcelain figures. If you look closely, you can see that each egg has a different design, one for each country that they’ve lived in. The crown represents Spain, the sun Uruguay and the eagle USA. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did when I was painting it.
