Here is Day 3 on a horseshoe crab competition. I’m having fun and feeling like I can get this pretty much perfect. I hope I win so I can ask him for a lesson instead of reward money.
The secrets I’ve discovered in this painting are:
1. Indian red.
2. Mix translucent pink with everything. To get purple, mix it with turquoise. To transition between red to yellow, mix it with yellow. To put a layer ontop of a black-alzurian crimson, mix it with soft white.
3. Use titanium white for the cold blue shadows.
4. A good black with a predominately dark red painting is: norse black.
5. A good weekly plan might be: Day 1 = measure, Day 2 = darks and lights with a big brush, Day 3 = push paint around, Day 4 = paint upside down, Day 5 = get comfy and sit on the ground, Day 6, Contrast, Day 7 = gray makes the artist.
Question: Is the image I’m working with the correct one? I’m seeing lines and I’m painting them in thinking, Is this a new type of art? Computer screen realism? Maybe it expresses a sad reality of not actually knowing what a horseshoe crab looks like, yet painting it with detail equivalent to an illiterate monk carefully copying text during the medieval era.”