Wax Paper and Ribbon: Session 6

Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 7:37PM
Sadie Valeri in painting, still life

I had a studio drama today. I tried to make a tiny adjustment to the wax paper in the setup, and accidentally knocked an entire loop of ribbon off of the silver platter. The loop then flopped over the rest of the ribbon pile, pretty much distorting every inch of the curls. AACK.

I held my breath and spent several tense minutes nursing all the loops back into their respective positions. For several horrible moments I didn't think I'd be able to salvage it, and imagined all the work involved to re-draw and repaint it - I've already invested 20 hours of work onto this little 12 x 12 scrap of board. But thanks goodness, the satin fabric had some "memory" of the curls they have been sitting in for a week now and eventually they settled back into a fairly close semblance of their original position.

Anyway, it sounds small but I was pretty shaken imagining 5 days of work nearly negated, and had to stop painting and watch an hour of TLC "What Not to Wear" to recuperate. Drama drama.

Once calm I resumed painting and managed to finish the second layer of underpainting. I even remembered what it's called, this opaque underpainting: "ebauche". I guess that's what I am doing.

I'm excited to have such a developed foundation to start the "real" painting on. With the earlier stages of contour drawing and underpainting there is no magical illusion, just preparation - all the work but little satisfaction. It will be fun to paint on this surface where I have already taken a stab at the drawing, value and color decisions.

Now the painting needs to dry before I can continue, which is good timing as I have a friend arriving from the East Coast tonight to visit and won't have time to paint for a few days.

I am continuing to film the time-lapse, but editing it and posting it take a lot of extra time so I won't be posting the videos very often.

Finally, thanks to those who have written me such encouraging emails and comments. I consider this my own personal art journal but it's always really nice to know other people are enjoying following along, and I think all artists need as much encouragement as we can get. So thank you, it means a lot to me.

Article originally appeared on Sadie Valeri Atelier | Oil Painting, Art Classes, Instructional Videos | San Francisco, California (https://www.sadievaleri.net/).