I just finished this painting, which I started in late November 2008. It’s called Graveyard Girl from the Dream City and is 11×14 inches, oil on panel. It’s a kind of surreal portrait of an imaginary girl in ornate finery standing in front of a tombstone-strewn night landscape with a dream city background.

For all posts about this painting, see the dream city category. I have a lot more info about this project in the earlier posts.

Graveyard Girl from the Dream City by Airn LeBus. Oil on panel, 11x14 inches, 2009.

I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, it has a kind of shining dark clarity which I think is unique. Painting on panel and leaving a lot of hard edges yielded a crispness which contrasts with the surreal nature of the painting. It took “too long”, but I learned a lot. A lot of time was spent on the face fixing some issues, and a lot on the clothing which I had not planned out properly and which I changed halfway through. So like many of my paintings, much time was spent re-doing stuff or experimenting / figuring things out. I think painting on panel is more difficult for me than canvas, but I can’t glaze in the same way on canvas so I have been using panel when I am going for harder edges and lots of glazing.

Total time spent on this: about 40 hours painting and 14 hours drawing and planning.

Graveyard Girl from the Dream City (detail)

On the clothing, I suffered from lack of reference material and the small size of the details. I wanted to do some gold embroidery like in the Ghent Altarpiece but after trying it for a few hours / sessions, I ended up painting over it and adopting a simpler approach. The gems in the middle ended up looking cool but part of the effect was accidental — I wiped off some paint and removed some lower layers by mistake. It made a kind of glow-effect that I kept and built on.

I like the final glazed-over face, even though I initially painted a dead layer that was too dark and it took me many careful sessions to lighten it. I left some parts “too dark” since she looks kind of corpse-like and it fits with the graveyard scene. I’m not quite sure if she is undead, or a ghost, or what. Her eyes follow you around the room though, so that must mean she is still alive

I glazed vermillion (hue) and yellow ochre over the raw umber dead layer underpainting to get the flesh tone. I also put more opaque white/yellow/vermillion for highlights and to lighten up the underpainting.

Graveyard Girl from the Dream City (background detail)

Once I finished this, I didn’t using retouching varnish. Varnish in general can really unify and deepen a painting and just overall make it look way better, but you can’t use a final varnish on an oil painting until it is truly dry; a general rule of thumb seems to be a year. You can put retouching varnish on when it is only touch-dry though, like maybe a week or two after your painting is done. I used to do that with all my paintings but a few of them are still sticky months later so I am going to stop using it. This one would be at major risk for the same thing, since many parts are thick with many fairly oily layers so I am already concerned about drying times.

Switching to mars black has helped, since it dries much faster than ivory black which I was using before. I also started ‘oiling out’ much more lightly after parts were sticky for many days due to too much oil in the oiling out and glazing process. Dust is also a major concern when the painting is sticky like that. Now I very lightly apply oil with my fingers and wipe as much off as possible, again with fingers or very gently putting a paper towel against the painting and running a finger over it to get the excess oil up. Even after a week of drying, rubbing a paper towel over the oiled-out painting seems to remove paint. I usually try to paint very thinly so depending on the color used and oil amount, a week is usually enough time for me to oil out and do another session. I use bleached linseed oil which I understand dries faster than normal linseed and also yellows less.

Who knows about all this stuff though, because scouring the web or books gives conflicting info, and there are so many different combinations of technique and materials which can yield different results. I just read books and search on the web, take everything I read with a grain of salt, and try stuff and if it seems to work I keep doing it.

Categories: completed, dream city, oil painting, painting tips, portrait, surreal by Airn
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I’ve been working on this painting since late November 2008, this is tentatively called Graveyard Girl From The Dream City and is oil on 11×14 inch panel.

For all posts about this painting, see the dream city category.

You can also jump to just the finished version here: graveyard-girl-from-the-dream-city-completed

Graveyard Girl from the Dream City (work in progress)

Detail view:

Graveyard Girl from the Dream City (detail) - work in progress

Planning, transferring the drawing, imprimatura

I initially wanted to paint something like a combination of Pigtail Gurl and Dream City in a larger format and with the idea that I can do a better job now that I have more experience. I wanted to experiment more with the “dead layer” technique too, especially after trying it with my Christmas Angel painting and having some success with it there. As I was planning it out the drawing got more complicated and the buildings and such ending up being a bit less weird than the Dream City, although I will still use a similar palette and the skyline and sky will be similar.

I used Poser software to create a model of the girl that I lit and posed as I had envisioned and then used that as I would a normal photo reference. I did the line drawing all in Photoshop, and then printed it out at Kinko’s. I also did some color study stuff in Photoshop. I used graphite transfer paper to get it on the panel (tracing over my printed-out drawing). This is the first time I’ve tried this technique and it worked well, but I dislike the overall process and aesthetic of digital art so on projects I have been going back to traditional media (pencil/paper/etc) for everything, including the planning and initial drawing. After recently looking at some Albrecht Dürer stuff I’m even more inspired to get better at drawing and to generally eschew digital techniques. I ended up changing the drawing considerably later, I will post that later as a comparison to the final painting.

I went over the drawing on the panel in sepia ink (ultra fine Sharpie) and put a thin wash of olive greenish color over everything (imprimatura) using Turpenoid, a little Galkyd Light, tiny bit of red ochre, yellow ochre light, and ivory black. It really didn’t need to be that complex…a couple times recently I have used a few transparent coats of acrylic, very thin to keep it smooth, just black and yellow, for an olive green color. The imprimatura is partly to wash away the graphite and seal the pen, and partly as a ground for the next layer since the panel I was using was too smooth and shiny. You can also let the brush strokes show through to add variety and texture, although in this one I didn’t do that. I made sure not to use too much turps as it will cause the paint to lose cohesion, that happened to me on my Two Mushrooms painting. Using Turpenoid in the paint is not my favorite thing, that’s another reason for me to use acrylic for the imprimatura.

Dead layer underpainting

With the girl’s face, I am again glazing over a raw umber dead layer underpainting. It is very nice to just focus on the tonal values and such without worrying about color initially.

My first session of underpainting for the face ended up being way too dark, partly cause I had a rather bright light on my easel and it was too close to the painting, duh. I’m getting better about physically stepping back from the painting a lot, moving the light around and viewing under other lights, looking at the painting in a mirror, upside down, etc. I also know from reading and my experience with “failed” glazing attempts that the underpainting should be rather lighter that desired for the final result, since I will be glazing onto the shadows as well as the lighter areas later, darkening most of it except the highlights.

Here’s a photo close to the end of the dead layer stage (although this was too dark!) and then a pic of the work-in-progress after I had glazed on some color:

Dead layer version of Graveyard Girl from the Dream City

In the first dead layer underpainting session I spent about 3 hours mostly on the face. I used raw umber and titanium white with no turpentine, oil, or other medium. I mixed up 4 shades on my palette and was happy at first to have a fairly nice reference (for a change) from my Poser rendering. Later I bemoaned the poser reference for the lack of realistic details, a real photo would have been superior.

I used several of the same-sized flat and filbert / tapered brushes so that I could use one for each value of umber…I painted all the darkest areas, then moved up in lightness and painted a bit wet-into-wet, doing a little blending afterward with clean dry brushes.

After that I spent several more sessions working on the face, lightening further and defining features, etc. It seems generally better to err on the side of it being too light rather than too dark…as long as you don’t lose the drawing and definition between elements, it’s easier to go back and darken shadows than to lighten everything up. It can take several sessions to cover up a dark area with light since I paint thinly, and it can look funky and chalky putting white over a darker color when the dark shows through.

Palette and glazing over the dead layer

I used cadmium yellow light (hue) + mars black for the greens so far, and have been using fairly fine bristle brushes a lot lately. Pthalho blue for water and sky, french ultramarine in the sky too. Clothing is prussian blue. For black I use mars and white is titanium.

The flesh tone glazing has been vermillion and yellow ochre with bleached linseed oil. Before I glaze I “oil out” the skin area by rubbing on the oil with my finger, letting it sit briefly and rubbing off the excess with a finger or very carefully with a paper towel. Dust has been a major issue with glazing, I constantly need to check for and remove dust from the painting as I am working on it. Storing the painting in between sessions face down carefully leaning against a wall helps. Dust on big brushes is probably the biggest culprit.

So far I have spent about 24 hours total painting this with another 10 or so drawing and planning.

The next post on this will probably be in a few weeks and will be the completed painting.

I am going to do a separate post later about what I have learned so far about glazing and using a dead layer.

Categories: dream city, oil painting, painting tips, portrait, surreal, work-in-progress by Airn
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Multiform clouds of mist obscure unearthly blue pools and strange lichened structures loom over crumbling tombstones. Anubis watches over an arcane garden with its odd flora and steaming central pool…eroded, swampy cemeteries adjoin surreal towers. A silently staring eye peers down upon the city…a floating aqueduct hovers above a Scarab-shaped building and the glowing water tumbles down through another peculiar edifice.

I finished my Dream City #1 painting after many months and a plethora of major revisions…paint over a building here, add a channel of glowing water there, slap in an Eye of Horus here, a tombstone there…

Dream City 1 by Airn LeBus, oil on canvas board, 14x18 inches, 2008

(I updated the picture above on 03-18-09 to a more accurate one, especially color-wise, and without the frame)

Really happy with the frame I had made for this one. I got it at Craft Essentials in Goleta…the color and distressed texture look great with the painting and I think the gold design around the edge fits well with the Egyptian motif.

I compiled some of the various stages and revisions this went through…it looks so much different now than the initial sketch and early versions!

Early versions of Dream City #1

Later versions of Dream City #1

Definitely going to do another Dream City, next time I will plan it better and do it on smooth panel rather than canvas so I can do details better…it was rough to try smaller details with the heavy canvas texture. Much like the Cracky-Chan painting, I have been working on this so long I have become a better painter whilst working on different paintings in the interim, so when I came back to this one it was tempting to try to “fix” a ton of stuff that I think I could do “better” now. I generally resisted that urge, although I did modify some buildings and clouds/smoke/fog and water and such on my final night of painting this, 11/05/08. It always takes me at least a week to post a finished painting cause I let it dry a while then put retouching varnish before I take a picture.

Overall I am happy with the look and feeling of this painting; my three favorites I have done so far are this one, The Well III, and Jovial Jack O’ Lantern. The next painting I will start is related…another odd girl kinda like Pigtail Gurl but I want to include part of this cityscape behind her so that she is sitting for the portrait in the Dream City.

Categories: completed, dream city, oil painting, surreal by Airn
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Here’s the latest update to my Dream-City oil painting…actually about a week old but I got a good pic of it in outside lighting with dry paint today so I’m able to post a picture where you can actually see the sky and such This is still a work in progress.

Dream-City work in progress 09-10-08

Look at the Dream City category to see all posts on this topic where I talk more about the painting and such.

Categories: dream city, lovecraft, oil painting, surreal, work-in-progress by Airn
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I made a ton of changes to this one tonight and over the past week. I started a bunch of Egyptian stuff including a giant scarab building, Eye of Horus, and a building with the head of Anubis. I altered many other parts, my painting has improved a bit since starting this in April so I’m going back over some stuff I was not happy with. I am really having fun with this one, once it’s done I plan on doing more along these lines for sure!

I really like doing the vegetation and grassy bits, I’ve been using yellow ochre/cad yellow light/viridian/raw umber/titanium white/terre verte. I’m mostly using a splayed out cheap round brush for the flora and it works great! The water is also super fun and it’s mostly phthalo blue and white, maybe with some lamp black and raw umber which I use a lot in general. I really like the way it looks to have the earth/grass sinking into and decaying into the water like on the left where the tombstones and crosses are…also the parts where you can see stone and stuff under the water like in the lower left…I dunno why but I really love that

Dream City as of 08-07-08

Categories: dream city, lovecraft, oil painting, surreal, work-in-progress by Airn
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Here’s the latest version of Dream City #1. Dunno how much more I’m going to do on this, but I expect several more sessions till I’m done.

Look at the Dream City category for all versions.

06-28-08:

06-24-08::

Categories: dream city, oil painting, surreal, work-in-progress by Airn
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Ahh, I’m feeling much better about the direction this is going in now…I just spent an unknown amount of time (3 hours? 5?) on this…ate a scone and drank bunch of tea, then totally lost track of time as I painted. Tea’s good like that.

Lately I have been really bummed about doing this on canvas and was wishing I had used panel so I could use a small liner brush and just do details easier…but today I finally loosened up, stopped trying to nitpick with a liner brush, and do broader, looser strokes with more highlights and such with a smallish #0 flat shader. It’s very short bristle-wise, and kind of thick…if you were looking at it from the top it’s like this: [ ] Anyway I am loving that brush right now, I’m using the edge to add white highlights and such so it can do fairly thin lines, but it introduces a randomness to the application of paint that is really helping this painting. It’s so nice when you can use a brush and/or technique that causes the paint to skip around and fall perfectly onto the canvas, with little effort on the painter’s part…that’s one thing I love about oil vs. acrylic, sometimes I feel like I’m cheating when  the paint falls into place magically seemingly of it’s own will.

I’m also working more on getting over fears of screwing stuff up, as a beginning painter often I am afraid to change something because I am not sure I can put it back the way it was I made a bunch of major changes to this one today that made me face that fear a bit.

Look at the Dream-City category to see all versions.

Here’s what I have so far, see below that for a detail a bit larger than life-size.

These parts aren’t totally done yet either, but here is some mostly-finished detail. I’m really happy about the old soggy graveyard, I dunno why but I really like that idea, a graveyard that’s kind of flooded and old like that.

Categories: dream city, oil painting, painting tips, surreal, work-in-progress by Airn
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I’m having a tremendous amount of fun with this one, and it’s going to be the first in a series of strange and somewhat eldritch dream-cities.

The main thing I have  learned with this one - I will never again paint on canvas without laying down some base color, I tried to jump right in and ended up with finished buildings that had little tiny white gaps which I had to painstakingly paint all over again to fill them in…very very annoying. I’ve spent tons of time on this fixing things that I could have spent painting new and exciting stuff, not only fixing the lame white gaps but also due to lack of planning…I was really making things up as I went along and kept painting over whole buildings, turning stone to grass, etc. It’s fun to be able to do that, like I added the channels of water right over what once was stone, but I want to plan stuff out a little better next time This one was actually weird cuz I just grabbed a canvas and started painting the city straight away with some ultramarine and turps and a liner brush…just frantically sketching the city out in about 30 min. It wasn’t until much later that I sat down and decided I really needed to draw it out a bit on paper to figure out where I was going with it.

Influences / inspiration for this include the Thief series of games, Lord Dunsany, Tim Kirk, and H.P. Lovecraft.

Look at the Dream-City category to see all versions.

Here’s what I have so far. This is 14×18 inches, oil on canvas board. Below I will post the original painted sketch and an earlier work-in-progress…you can see how much different it has become. I still have quite a ways to go so we’ll see how it develops and changes…

Dream City 1 05-29-08

Here’s the sketch:

Dream City 1 initial sketch

Categories: dream city, oil painting, painting tips, surreal, work-in-progress by Airn
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