Each year in celebration of Earth Day, the Gamblin oil paint company hosts a special contest. Using paint residue scraped out of their "Torit" air filtration system, they blend a limited-edition line of gray paint from the recycled pigments. Since they produce different quantities of each color every year, each year's Torrit Gray blend is different. The ultimate in recycling! Gamblin then hosts a contest challenging artists to make a painting using only Torrit Gray, black, and white. You can check out all the details here, at
www.gamblincolors.com.
This is my entry, a portrait of Frans depicting his inner (contemplative) Viking.
And here's the sketch I did underneath:
Usually I don't do anywhere near as detailed an underpainting or drawing, but because the painting was to be monochromatic I wanted to work out the tonal values a bit more thoroughly first. I kind of wish I hadn't painted over it, as it was a better likeness than the painting turned out to be!
5 comments:
you have really great works here .
it was fantastic to have discovered your blog today !!!
see you !!
i am trying to be a follower of your blog , but i don't know if the "button" is working .
i came back latter to be sure .
Thanks so much for your support, Caio! Sorry there's not more to follow; I haven't had a chance to upload my most recent stuff yet. (Nor do I have the time to do much new work, either!) Glad you like my work; it is much appreciated :)
I love your work, too! (And the cat's also pretty swell!) I'm glad you posted a comment on Julie Zickefoose's blog, or I wouldn't've found you.
Hi Catbird! Thanks so much for your support! I took a peek at your blog; I do hope you'll brush off the dust and update it more frequently, as it seems you have a lot of interesting thoughts on nature that the world would benefit from reading! Your post on window hits reminded me that I have two goldfinches currently in my freezer, waiting to be painted. The first hit the window of the nature center where I work in the middle of a birthday party I was hosting for a bunch of kindergartners; the second I found about a week ago in the parking lot of the nature center; my suspicion is that he, too, hit the window but made it to the lot before finally succumbing to the impact. We have enough hawk silhouettes and the feeders are close enough to the windows that we don't have too many fatal crashes (although I do find lots of dust prints from the mourning doves, I think they've got thick enough skulls that they're just a little more dazed than usual for a while!) Even though it's sad, mourning doves and goldfinches we have in abundance, but hearing about the loss of warblers and woodcocks is tragic.
I think Wally's pretty swell, too :) He's probably thirteen or fourteen now--he's a pound kitty so we don't know for sure. He's gotten very slow and creaky due to his diabetes, and I don't get to see him as often as I'd like since moving out of my mom's place a few years ago, but he's still my #1 catlove!
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