Cobalt Studios: Summer Scene Painting #11

Cobalt Studios

Tiger on Velour
Our second to the last project was called, "You want me to paint THAT on WHAT?"  This was the first of two projects where we didn't have teacher demonstrations, but each of the teachers acted as designers and/or consultants for half the class.  For this project, Kimb was my mentor.

I had mentioned a week or so earlier that I had never painted on velour and wondered if they ever did such a thing.  Little did I know, there was a project in the syllabus where we painted on non-traditional surfaces, or alternate surfaces.  Turns out velour is more of an alternate surface because it has been used as a traditional surface for a very long time.  It's just not a regular surface I guess.  I dunno.

So when the assignments were handed out, I was given a small picture of a Chinese tiger painted in watercolor, and a piece of beige velour.  I had never painted on velour before, so I asked for advice.  Kimb suggested I use light sprays of plastic varnish in several coats to create a surface for the paint to lay on, rather than soaking in.  I had heard that paint soaks into velour rapidly.

For the project, we were also supposed to write out our suggested process along with questions we had from the teachers.  Once we had our process down, we had to schedule a few moments with our mentor and let them weigh in on it.

My maquette.  The paintbrush is in the picture to establish scale.  The velour at the bottom is the swatch

My Process
As I looked at this picture, I decided I would proceed as follows:

1. Spray 5 thin coats of plastic varnish on the velour, allowing them to dry in between
2. Make a transparency of the image
3. Project the image onto the velour (pinned to the wall)
4. Ink image onto velour with brown sharpie marker
5. Lay velour onto floor
6. Paint background "watercolor"
7. Paint basic tiger and rock shapes
8. Detail tiger with lining brush
9. Paint foreground with one inch Purdy
10. Create stencil for border
11. Paint border

My process seemed to be okay.  Kimb questioned if it was a good idea to ink directly from the transparency to the velour without making a pounce first.  I have inked from transparencies for many years and I was and am confident in my ability to do that so I felt I didn't need to add that step.  I think she was concerned about the fuzzy part on the belly of the tiger and the front leg.  I had already decided to just make indication marks for that, rather than a hard, straight line.

Step #1:  The Test Flat

We made test flats for many of the projects we did at Cobalt.  This one was no exception.  After I had cut my velour to size, I took the excess and stapled it around a piece of homasote to create a test flat.  First I divided the test flat into halves and on one half I sprayed several coats of plastic varnish, and on the other side I left it pristine.  Then I proceeded to try painting with different thicknesses of paint and painting in different directions.

I found that thinner paint seemed to sink into the velour pretty rapidly but more viscous paint stayed on the surface.  I also learned that if you paint along with the nap of the fabric the paint lays nicely on it.  If, however you paint against the nap, the paint tends to bunch up under the nap or pile and creates a texture that I didn't want on this project.  I suppose there may be times when you would want that texture.  I didn't.

I also found that the non-varnished side accepted paint just fine.

The test flat

Step #2:  Inking and Layout

I sprayed several coats of plastic varnish on the velour and had to find stuff to do while I waited for it to dry.  I'm pretty sure that getting ready to paint on this project took longer than the actual painting of the project.

I made the transparency of the tiger on a copy machine.  I had to lighten the image somewhat in order for it to read.  Then I pinned the velour to the wall and situated the projector.  When I had the image where I wanted it on the velour, I began inking with a brown sharpie.  I was careful on the fuzzy parts of the tiger to only make indication marks instead of lines.  Kimb saw that and agreed it was okay for me to have not added the pounce step.  The inking was a success.

When I laid the fabric on the floor, I worked my hand back and forth on it and discovered the direction of the nap.  On the selvage edge of the fabric, I drew arrows in the direction of the nap and wrote, "Stroke this way," in several places, just to remind me how I wanted to paint the thing.

The tiger inked on the velour

Step #3:  The Background Painting

I decided to eyeball the background portions of this piece, rather than inking them in.  I chose to do so because they had a watercolor vibe in the original piece and didn't have solid outlines.  Using a brush on a bamboo, I held the image in one hand and painted with the other.  Typically I hold the image in my right hand because I am left handed. 

For most of the background, I chose to paint upside down as far as the image went because it was easier to find reference areas, and it also became about painting abstract shapes, rather than trying to copy exactly some mountain or such.  The whole painting was done with the velour on the floor and me standing up with a paintbrush in a bamboo.  Everything except for the inking and the stenciled border.

Background laid in.  Without detail, it looks ratty.  Note the arrows at the bottom right of the image.  Those were my nap marks

Step #4:  Tiger body painting

Next I painted the broad strokes of the tiger's body.  I noticed there was a highlight built in to the paint job in the original right where the tiger's body transitions from a horizontal surface to a vertical surface.  I decided to paint that broadly and let the detail bring it into focus.  I also noted there was a bright orange patch at the bottom of the body.  I painted these features in as I painted the body.  I had to paint fast because unlike other surfaces, the velour didn't allow the paint to move around very much.

Having never painted on velour before, I kind of questioned myself at this point of the process.  I wasn't sure if I liked how it looked or not.  I decided to trust myself, though and kept painting.  I knew that people had painted on velour for hundreds of years and so I would be able to succeed.  When I started putting the detail in, I knew I was going to be alright.

Tiger's body roughed in.  Beginnings of detail in rock, background and tiger.

Step #5:  Stripes

As I began detailing the tiger, I decided I would paint the outline with black paint, at least where there was to be an outline.  Instead of using black paint for the stripes, however, I chose to use Van Dyke Brown for those.  Van Dyke Brown is a richer color and tends to reflect light better than black.  Van Dyke Brown is the darkest color in the Rosco palette before you get to pure black.

When I painted the stripes and the outline, the whole piece came into focus and I knew I was going to like this piece.  At this time I also detailed the rocks and some of the background.

Tiger coming into focus

Step #6:  Foreground

For the foreground bamboo leaves and such, I used a combination of burnt and raw umber.  I laid the burnt umber down first so it would appear to be behind and in shadow.  Then I laid the raw umber down where it would look like it was catching a little light.  Burnt umber is kind of a chocolate brown whereas raw umber is a little more green.  The two colors work together very well in my opinion.

I used a one inch Purdy for the bamboo leaves.  I started at the base of the leaf and as I dragged the brush, I gave it a quarter twist so I could start wide and terminate into a point.  I painted the leaves quite fast.  It may have been the funnest part of the paint job.

Finally I did line work on the rocks in the extreme foreground.

Evidence that I actually did paint this thing with a bamboo.  Note the reference photo in the right hand

Ready for the border

Step #7:  Creating the Stencil the Metropolitan Opera Way

I learned many new skills while at Cobalt.  One of which was how to create stencils the way the scenic artists do at the Metropolitan Opera.  The scenics there taught Rachel and Kimb how they crafted stencils.  I like this way better as I can create a stencil in an hour and be painting immediately, as opposed to finding a stencil online, ordering it, paying for overnight delivery and waiting for it to show up.

The first step is to draft and draw the stencil on a piece of brown kraft paper.  Then you place the kraft paper upside down on a self healing cutting mat.  The next step is to secure the corners with tape.  When the kraft paper is secured, you begin covering the back of it with clear, two inch packing tape.  It's important to lay the tape down in such a way that you don't curl the kraft paper.  It's important to let the tape go beyond the kraft paper on all four sides which also helps to secure it.  Once done, take an exacto knife and cut along the edge of the kraft paper.

Then you turn the kraft paper over and repeat the process.  When the front is all taped, you then cut out your stencil with the exacto knife.  We tape the front last so we don't have to turn it up when it's time to cut out the design.  When the design is all cut out, then it's time to release the stencil from the green self healing board.

I chose a two part stencil to replicate the border from the image.  One stencil would be painted darker and one lighter.  Remember when creating stencils to factor in a repeat mark so you can make your stencil line up each time you place it.  It's also important to design in little connectors or paper sinews so the fine detail in the stencil doesn't curl and bend as you paint it, giving you unpredictable results.

Design laid out.  Note the repeat, diamond and oval

Tapeed back

Front taped and folded in half so the mirror image would line up

Cutting it out

Burnishing the tape

Step #8: Stenciling

For this application, I sat and knelt down.  I set up the stencil on the center line first so the medallions or major part of the design would be dead center.  Then I used a scenic fitch brush in a dry brush technique, straight up and down and gently painted the stencil in a circular motion.  I laid in the background or lighter color first, then I painted in the darker part last.

First stencil laid in

Second stencil laid in

Sides filled in.

When I was just finishing the line work, Rachel and Kimb walked in from their lunch and Rachel said one word about my project.  "Magnificent!" was all she said.  That was a great compliment from her.  I appreciated hearing it.  I wondered when this one was done, "How can this possibly get any better?"  I would soon find out.

I loved my time at Cobalt.  I would return again in a heartbeat.

Cobalt Studios: Summer Scene Painting #8

Cobalt Studios

Drapery Project
At Cobalt, as I have said a few times before, there was no wasted time.  Each time we finished a project, we'd set up a new project.  We would stretch muslin over our flats and have to size them with starch.  While we were waiting for the starch to dry, Rachel or Kimb would teach us something else.  On one of those occasions we learned about painting drapery.

Of all the things I painted at Cobalt, I think my drapery assignment was my least successful.  If I had to choose one project that I liked the least (not because of the teachings or anything the teachers did) I would choose the drapery project.  I performed the least well on that one.  I had one unteachable moment at the beginning of the project and it served to sabotage me all the way through.  I try to be teachable all the time.  Once in awhile I mess up, though and the drapery project was one of those times.  Consequently I had to learn the hard way on this project.

But since I learned things on this project and I am not afraid to admit when I've made a mistake I have decided to blog about it anyway.

Step One:  Base Coat and Cartooning
This was one of those quick projects in between other projects, and we were told to take a flat that was 2' x 3' and choose two colors from the paint corral and scumble them together.  I chose purple and yellow.  The paint corral was a collection of all the extra paint we had mixed up until that time.  When we would finish a project, instead of throwing away all that paint, we capped it and put it in the paint corral.  Then it was fair game for anyone to use from that time on.  It saved a great deal of time in paint mixing.  No sense mixing a new color when the color we wanted was already mixed.

I chose purple and yellow, complementary colors.  Other people were choosing blue and light blue, or blue and green, colors that were analogous or related to each other in some way.  Kimb questioned me about my color choice and I think was giving me the opportunity to make a switch, but I went ahead and did it anyway.  This was my one unteachable moment while at Cobalt Studios.

At this point, we didn't know what we were painting, we had just been told to scumble two colors together.  Then we found out.  We were painting drapery, but not just any drapery, embroidered drapery.  Even though I made a poor decision at the beginning of this project, I still learned the principles and when I have to paint drapery like this again, I will have a much better outcome.

Rachel showed us a photo of drapery that she had put through photoshop and had abstracted it into color blocks that represented local color, shade, shadow and highlight.  With charcoal on a bamboo, she then cartooned out the big shapes on her demo piece.  She suggested that with drapery, she usually cartooned it upside down because she was more successful on drapery when she approached it in the abstract shapes upside down than she did when she painted it right side up. I followed suit.

Ugly scumble of purple and yellow and charcoal cartooning

Step #2:  Stenciling
Next we were shown the collection of stencils and asked to find a stencil with an all over pattern but one with recognizable shapes within that pattern.  Rachel then taught us how to stencil specific to this project.  With wallpaper, it's important to meet edges and to be careful where the repeats go.  On embroidered drapery, however, it's important for the stencil to follow the curves.  We worked on one fold at a time with the stencil, making sure the recognizable shape was visible here and there.

I was not having a good color day and I chose brown for my stencil color.  Another poor choice.  That's the thing about choices.  A poor choice is still a choice.

Ugly brown stencil on an ugly purple and yellow scumble

Step #3:  Shade
Rachel then demonstrated how to paint the shade.  Once again, shade is the shadow on a surface caused by the absence of light on that surface while cast shadow is the shadow that is projected off of one surface and onto another.  The shade on this project as on all the other projects was made of burnt umber and ultramarine blue, thinned to transparency with water.

It's important to note that scenic artists keep the paint elevation or other reference material close by when they paint in order to compare and refer to it during the process.

The shade is painted by finding the deepest part of a fold and painting darkest there and bringing it out into a fuzzy line as the shade transitions to the light.  Fuzzy lines are made by painting a brush stroke of clear water on the fuzzy edge before painting with the paint color.  The paint then mixes with the water which dilutes and thins it.  We help a fuzzy line out with a brush just a little.

Rachel painting the shade upside down.  Note the source material next to her work

My project with the shade painted on it

Step #4:  Cast Shadow
Looking at the source material, we were to identify the difference between the shade and the cast shadow.  Whereas shade has a fuzzy edge, cast shadow has a hard edge.  Our cast shadow on this project (on every project) was a mixture of ultramarine blue and velour black, thinned to transparency with water.  In other words, Payne's Grey.

The shadow painting was pretty straightforward.  Where the shadow was on the reference, transfer it to the painting.  Pretty quick.

Shadow added

Step #5:  Hightlight
In the high points of the drapery, where the light would strike it normally, we added highlights.  Highlights are made by taking the predominant local color, and adding the "color of the light".  I had always made my highlights by adding white paint to the local color prior to studying at Cobalt.  Adding the color of light for my highlight was revelatory for me.

Since my predominant color on my piece was an unattractive yellow, I added the amber color of light to my base coat.  Still another example of where my poor choice at the beginning served to make this project less successful than it should have been.

As I looked at everyone else's work on this project, I have to say on this one mine was the weakest, and that was due to my one unteachable moment at the beginning of the project.

Highlight added

I really want to paint this project again, but this time make a better choice at the beginning of it.  I wish I had taken the opportunity Kimb had given me at the beginning to choose better colors.  I'm glad I didn't end my Cobalt experience on this project.

Cobalt Studios: Summer Scene Painting #6

Cobalt Studios

Brecciated Marble
There was no wasted time at Cobalt.  While we were waiting for parts of the woodgrain project to dry, we stapled pre-sized muslin to the floor and began the base coat for our marble assignments.  We painted the end of both woodgrain assignments and the beginning of both marble assignments simultaneously.  For the sake of clarity, however, I will only write about one project at a time.

While we were waiting for paint to dry, we sat in the classroom (which was actually just a rolling table on the studio floor) and discussed different kinds of marble.  We learned about how marble is formed in the earth and we learned about different painting techniques.  Each of us was then instructed to select two samples of marble from the folder.  At least one of the samples was supposed to be a mid-value marble.  The reason for that was because it would become our trompe l'oeil marble and the mid-value showed the highlights and shadows better.

As a scenic artist, I have painted hundreds of square feet of marble in my career.  I have painted many different types and varieties.  I have painted many different techniques.  I don't say that to boast, it just is what it is.  I determined, however that I was at Cobalt to be taught and to learn, so I chose one marble I had never painted before and also two techniques I had never used for marble before.  I decided ahead of time that I was not there to demonstrate what I already knew.  I was there to learn what was being taught.

Breccia marble is a marble with a violent past.  It is a collection of broken rocks that are cemented together by a fine grained matrix.  Fault breccia is created when two fault blocks grind past each other.  The broken fragments are then cemented together.  There are other kinds of breccia.  Basically, it's the conglomerate of marble.  It takes a great polish and it's quite stunning to look at.  I decided to paint breccia for one of my marble projects.

Step #1:  The Base Coat
First of all, Kimb demonstrated a breccia method.  It was because of her demonstration that I decided to paint that particular marble.

The first thing I did was to tear up scraps of bogus paper into the irregular but angular shapes of the stones in the breccia marble.  I tore paper into large, medium and small stone shapes.

Then I put my first scumble down.  I scumbled some dark browns with some medium browns.  Then I laid the bogus paper onto the wet paint and scumbled lighter colors over that.  Successive layers of scumbling and bogus paper friskits later, along with some random spatter and I had my base coat done.  All wet on wet.  When I was satisfied with the base coat, I pulled the bogus paper and went to lunch at Big Kev's Barbecue.

If you attend Cobalt, Big Kev's is a must.  It's about half a mile down the road from the studio and he serves from a food truck from about 10 AM until all the barbecue is gone.  However long it lasts is how long he stays open.  Oh, and it is GOOD!

Sadly, I got so caught up in the painting of this project that I didn't photograph as much of it as I thought.  So I just have shots of finished steps instead of process shots.

Base coat, stage one

Base coat, stage two

Step #2:  The Layout
We were told to walk around our marble to find the worst corner.  The corner we liked the least.  Once that was located, we laid out our profile of the finished marble piece.  We were going to paint a marble entablature.  With charcoal on a bamboo, we laid out our entablature.  The corner we liked least would be painted out.  That way, our pieces were more dramatic.

We had a tool called a story stick, which is a piece of brown kraft paper that is folded down the middle lengthwise and has markings at intervals which are then transferred onto the marble piece on either side.  Lines are drawn between the transferred markings with charcoal and a lining stick.  Then the profile of the entablature is cartooned on the side.  Every great paint job is a good drawing first, I always say.

Step #3:  Shade and Shadow
Using the fuzzy lines we had learned about in the basics project, we began painting our shade on the curved surfaces of the trompe l'oeil.  Using fuzzy lines can help you paint both concave and convex shapes.  There were both on this project.  Shade is the shadow which is caused by lack of light on an object, whereas shadow is cast from an object.  We painted both of those a little differently.  Shade is created by mixing burnt umber with ultramarine blue and thinning to a watercolor transparency, and shadow is mixed by combining black with ultramarine blue, in other words Payne's Grey.  The shadows are also mixed to watercolor transparency.

On a convex surface, the shade is painted on the underneath side, whereas the concave surface has the shade painted on the top side.  It will be clear in the first photograph.

After the shade is painted, then cast shadows are added on the areas where light is blocked from one surface to another.  All of these shades and shadows were painted with brushes on bamboo and lining sticks.  This was guided work, not freehand.  Also notice that the shade, shadow, highlight and zinger all project past the charcoal lines.  This is all going black anyway so it doesn't matter.

Cartooning with charcoal and shades painted.  Note the concave and convex surfaces and the fuzzy lines

Cast shadows added

Step #4:  Highlight and Zinger
Highlight is made by taking the local color, or base color and adding the color of the light to it.  If your light source is amber, then add that to it.  If the light source is pink, add pink to it and so on and so forth.  It's important not to go too far in value above your local color or the piece will appear cartoonish.  I like my shade and shadow to be transparent and I like my highlights to be translucent.  Zinger and cut lines are opaque.  I get the desired translucence from my highlight by adding water.

On the convex surfaces, on the top third, I painted my highlights with fuzzy lines.  I also added a small highlight at the top of the piece.

Highlights added at top of piece and on the two convex pieces of the entablature

When the highlight was dry, I added the zinger.  Actually, I added the zinger when the piece was still wet which serendipitously gave me a fuzzy zinger that I kind of liked, then I waited for that to dry and added another zinger on top of that.  The zinger goes on the very top edge of the entablature and in the middle of the two fuzzy highlights.

Fuzzy zinger in an impatient accident

Solid zinger on top of the fuzzy one

Step #5:  Bounce Light and Cut Line
For my secondary light source, I chose a blue light from ankle level.  Somewhere along the way, either Rachel or Kimb or both suggested that bounce light often looked really good when it was a complementary color.  Since my basic color of the piece was overall an earthy orange, rust color, I chose a blue bounce light.  I placed it on the bottom edges of each of the projecting surfaces, as well as in the bottom third of the convex pieces.  Bounce light, by the way is best painted in a dry brush technique

Blue bounce light added on bottom surfaces of projections

Next came the cut line.  I used my one inch Purdy and a lining stick to make a cut line at each transition, where one piece projected beyond another one.  In other words the cut line goes at the deepest part of the shadow.

Cut line added

Step #6:  Paint it Black
With the one inch Purdy, I cut in the profile with velour black.  Rachel calls Rosco Velour Black the "Cadillac of black."  When that was complete, I got a bigger brush and laid in the rest of the black.  No sense painting it with a tiny brush.  I've always been taught to use the biggest brush possible for the thing you are working on.  Once the black was on, the piece was done.

Edge cut in

Black painted

This was a very satisfying piece to work and learn on.  I was happy with the results, but more importantly I was happy with the things I learned on this project.

All the paint is dry, the piece is finished

Cobalt Studios: Summer Scene Painting #4

Cobalt Studios

The Cobalt Method
Just a note about the teaching style at Cobalt,  The early projects involved a lot of demonstration.  The teachers would demonstrate and we would copy.  As the time went on, there was less demonstration and more of us having to take what we learned and fill in the blanks.  By the last projects we were mentored through the projects but there was no demonstration.  I thought that was a great teaching method.  It ensured that everyone started out with all the proper information and then there was a certain accountability required to finish.  I liked that a great deal and have incorporated it into my pedagogy.

Weathered Wood
After the basics assignment, we went directly into woodgrain.  We did two projects simultaneously, so we didn't have to wait for dry time.  For the purpose of the blog, though, I'll separate the two in different posts.

We were first shown some photos of old barn wood.  I find there is no substitute for visual reference.  I always encourage my students to have a paintbrush in one hand and the visual reference or the paint elevation in the other.  Typically, when I see scenic artists make mistakes it's when they are painting and the visual reference is somewhere else.  Thirty feet away or so.

Step #1:  Cartooning
Rachel demonstrated this piece.  The first thing we did was take a piece of charcoal in a bamboo pole (which from this point on I will reference only as 'a bamboo') and cartooned the wood planks and the doorway we wished to paint.  Charcoal is notorious for leaving 90% more material on your work than you need to make a mark, so when we were done with this step we flogged off the excess charcoal.  A flogger is made by taking a piece of wood about two feet or two foot, six inches long and adding a bunch of muslin strips to one end.  A flogger is an important tool for the scenic artist.  It's like a magic eraser.  Flogging removes most of the charcoal and leaves only enough to see the lines but not so much that it changes the color of wet paint.

When we had flogged off the work, we then inked the lines with a permanent marker in a bamboo.  We did this freehand without a lining stick.  We used the permanent marker for the very reason people say don't use a permanent marker.  It bleeds through a few layers of paint.  We wanted our indication lines to project through to guide us later.  I've found that there are very few absolutes in the world.  Don't do this....except in certain situations.

Charcoal lines

Flogging

Inked with a blue permanent marker

Step #2:  Base Coat
The base coat is a wet on wet process that goes on quite fast.  We used a grey and a brown as our two colors.  To be fair, the brown was kind of a grey brown.  We laid the first color down in irregular stripes on the door section.  When doing this, it is extremely important to orient your stripes in the direction of the woodgrain.  Vertical stripes for vertical pieces of wood, horizontal stripes for horizontal pieces of wood.  Since this is a wet on wet technique, and you are painting it very quickly, it's okay, in fact it's better for you to paint just outside the lines.  You can clean that up when you paint the next board.

We put the second color down between the stripes of the first color and blended the edges just a little.  Once the door piece was based, we then dragged our brushes along the diagonal piece and the two horizontal pieces to give the proper direction to the boards.  If you do this quick, while the paint is still wet, you don't have to introduce a lot of new paint for this.  Just use what is already there.

First color, irregular stripes

Second color blended, kind of

Door section painted with diagonal and horizontals dragged through

Then we did the same thing for the other boards.  It's like a puzzle.  You have to place the right piece at the right time for it to work properly.  On the piece above, the two horizontal boards that are not yet painted would be first.  If the paint ends up on the vertical board at the left, no big deal because you can clean that up momentarily.  If you paint the vertical one first then you have to paint with much greater care on the two horizontal pieces.  It's important to figure all of that out before you begin painting.  Which piece gets painted first and the order etc...

Base coat complete

Step #3:  Graining
While we were waiting for the paint to dry, we did two things.  First we base coated the other side of our flats for the more refined woodgrain.  Second, we went to the classroom and looked at different kinds of woodgrain, received a handout with illustrations, and then we practiced painting woodgrain on the bogus paper floor.  Bogus paper is an absorbent paper that scenic artists like to lay down beneath their work.  Helps keep everything clean and orderly.  Cobalt was the first time I had ever painted on bogus paper.  It won't be the last.  I really liked painting on the bogus paper.

Rachel then told us to pick out three or four boards on our piece and do different woodgrain techniques on them.

After that, we found old ratty paintbrushes whose bristles were splayed and did a simple drag through the rest of the boards.  It was looking pretty ugly by this point.  My mantra to my students over the years has been, "The last thing you do is the only thing they see."  I have seen students get upset and want to quit on projects at this point because they don't look beautiful.  Many projects have to go through an"ugly duckling phase" before the become beautiful.  But don't worry, this one will get uglier before it gets prettier.

Notice in the images below that the paint has dried lighter than it was when it was wet.  Sometimes paint dries lighter sometimes it dries darker.  I believe this is directly related to whether or not white was mixed into the color.

Graining a few boards

The rest are dragged

Step #4:  Spatter and Drag
As the name would suggest, the next step involves spattering sections of the piece and then dragging with a dry brush through the wet spatter.  This is done in small sections so the paint doesn't dry before it can get smeared.  It is also important to drag along the direction of the board you are painting.  As I mentioned earlier, this project gets uglier before it becomes beautiful.  This step is the paint job at it's ugliest.  The thing about good scenic artists, though is that they can see the end from the beginning.  They know it has to go through this step before it can become beautiful.

Spatter and drag

Step #5:  Details
Since each of these boards are supposed to look like they are sitting on a different plane, it's important to identify which boards set higher than others.  This is designated by writing numbers on boards based on how many inches they set above the base.  The base is given the designation "0".  In this case the door is the lowest point and the vertical boards in the door would be marked "0".  The horizontal boards and the diagonal board on the door would be designated "1" because it is one inch above "0", and so on and so forth.  This is done with charcoal, which will be flogged off later.

Numeric designation

I added charcoal lines around the door just to help me see where my shadows went

Once the designations have been determined, the next step is to add cast shadow.  The cast shadow is made by mixing ultramarine blue and black.  In other words, Payne's Grey.  Using the designations as a guide, we then took a one inch Purdy angled sash brush on a bamboo and painted in our cast shadows.  Notice the shadows that fall across boards that are vertical are jagged on the bottom, because weathered wood ends up having grooves because some of the rings in the tree are harder than others and the softer ones recede as it weathers.

The most important thing to remember when painting shadows and highlights is Light Source.  Where is the light coming from?  Always think about that when doing any of the trompe l'oeil techniques.  The thing that will make your work look either good or amateurish more than anything is how well you understand light source.

We did use straight edges for the shadow work, by the way.  If a board has a designation of "1" and it is adjacent to a board that has a designation of "0", the shadow would be one inch thick.  If, however, a board had a designation of "2" and it was adjacent to a board that had a designation of "0" the shadow would be 2 inches thick.  In other words you have to do math.  It gets tricky when shadowing the door because part of the shadow is two inches thick and the other parts are only one inch thick.  I'll show that on the photos.

When the shadows are dry, the next step is the highlights.  Highlights are made by mixing the local color with whatever color the "light" is supposed to be.  In other words don't just use white paint to make a highlight.  If the color of the light is yellow, then that is your mixing color.  If it is pink or blue then use that.  That being said, it's not inappropriate to lighten your highlight with a little white, so long as you have the color of the light as well.

When painting the highlights, we used a one inch Purdy (from this point on, if I mention a one inch Purdy, it refers to the angled sash brush).  I like highlights that come and go.  They don't necessarily have to be full length to look convincing.  Place highlights on the edge of the board that light would naturally strike it.  In other words, if the light is coming from the left, the leading edge of the board is the left edge and that is where you would highlight.  Shadows are just the opposite.  They flee from the light.

First batch of shadows laid in

Charcoal flogged off at this point

More shadows and highlights.  Notice the shadows on the "Z".  Two inches, then one inch then two then one then two...

Step #6:  The Last Thing
The final bit of detail is the cut line.  For this we used Rosco Velour Black.  Rachel calls it "The Cadillac of Black."  Cast shadow is a transparent shadow that casts from one thing to another.  Velour black is what we used to create voids, such as where the boards end and it's completely dark beyond.  The jagged edge of the bottom of the door, or the space between boards were painted with velour black.  We also used a one inch Purdy to create a cut line right where the shadow begins when it's casting from a higher surface to a lower surface.  Having just a little darker hard line right there brings the whole piece into focus.

Cut line and voids filled in with velour black

The finished piece

This was a rewarding experience.  I enjoyed painting weathered wood.  You have to really see the end from the beginning on this project.  I really liked how Rachel combined techniques to paint not only the weathered wood, but also the trompe l'oeil.  I love the way she has codified the teaching of scenic art.