"Eva Belle's House"
9x12, oil/panel - NFS
I thought I was done with grounds for the time being, but I remembered I had a bottle of Golden GAC-100 and some Golden Matte Medium under the counter. So, I prepped a few panels (Ampersand Hardbord), some with just the Matte Medium and others with the GAC plus two different brands of acrylic gesso. Today, I painted on a board prepped with the Matte Medium.
The nice thing about this product is that it is transparent, so you're working against the natural warm dark of the hardboard. The Matte Medium made the board so dark, in fact, that it was almost my darkest value. I had to work "up" into the light. I started by sketching my basic shapes with a light grey. I left the windows unpainted until the very end, when I added just a touch of greyed color here and there for reflections. I particularly liked the texture of the acrylic; rather than brushing it on in an orderly fashion, I just had fun making swirls. (It's hard to get them to look artistic!) I'll get to the other grounds in the next few days.
If you saw my studio tour video in yesterday's post, you'll see the outside of the studio in the painting. It's the room in the upper right with the outside staircase.
By the way, I had a note from Scott Gellatly of Gamblin regarding my test with the Gamblin Oil Painting Ground. He pointed out a reference page the Gamblin website has that discusses grounds. There is also an excellent video demonstration on the page showing exactly how to apply the ground to both hardboard and canvas. Click here to visit the page.
