tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16125542499504889782024-03-14T04:49:51.124-07:00Nicholas Egon Jainschigg PaintingsArt, thoughts, whimsyNick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.comBlogger84125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-60631899821767808272013-06-06T20:29:00.001-07:002013-06-06T20:29:43.875-07:00Day 43--Bottles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Continuing the theme of light color on dark ground. Also the theme of how freaking hard it is to get the perspective right when you're drawing dark on dark. Note to self--sketch in wth white or gray-toned brushstrokes next time.....<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-86883393518742775282013-06-05T21:13:00.002-07:002013-06-05T21:13:41.681-07:00Day 42--Shell<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Still pursuing white-on-white subjects on a dark ground.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-33586565220247794092013-06-04T22:12:00.002-07:002013-06-05T21:11:38.777-07:00Day 41--Coffee<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A fraught subject. I love coffee. I love the taste, the smell, and most of all the caffeine. The lovely, lovely caffeine. So naturally it was a bit of a shock to find out a few years ago that instead of having a bunch of allergies to mold, pollen, cats and so forth, I was basically allergic to two things: wheat and coffee. Considering that these were my baseline diet at the time, I took it relatively calmly. Nowadays, I subsist on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/magazine/28food-t-000.html?_r=0" target="_blank">beans, rice</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tteok" target="_blank">Korean rice cakes,</a> <a href="http://www.laarepari.com/" target="_blank">arepas</a>, <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/asiana-food-market-east-providence" target="_blank">kimchi,</a> <a href="http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/41/450773/restaurant/Providence/Hong-Meas-East-Providence" target="_blank">laab,</a> and <a href="http://www.uptontea.com/shopcart/item.asp?from=catalog.asp&itemID=TA03&begin=0&parent=Teas%3EBlack%3EIndia&category=Assam&sortMethod=0&categoryID=17" target="_blank">strong Assam tea</a> and that's OK.....really....no, really. But I still like the smell of coffee, so I like making it for my wife first thing in the morning since she, at least, can drink it.<br />
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Anyhow, I love the little clamp-top container she stores it in and have wanted to paint it for a while.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-55211012686613584232013-06-03T20:52:00.005-07:002013-06-03T20:52:44.737-07:00Day 40--Skull on Brown<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
OK, I made a mistake and bought a gallon of chocolate-brown exterior latex instead of white. I intended to use it to add some extra primer to the panels I use for my daily paintings, since the texture as they come from the manufacturer is sort of....awful. Upon opening the can and realizing that it was now unreturnable, I briefly considered painting my house brown, but realized that it would be an interesting experiment to paint one or two hundred little paintings on a dark ground. Since I'm drawn to lighter-colored subjects: bones, glass bottles, shells; it's got some interesting potential.<br />
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This is a painting of one of my coyote skulls, donr on the brown ground. It was a really interesting change from painting on a white ground--I was much more aware of the relative lightness of things, as opposed to their relative darkness, if that makes any sense. I'm also paying an awful lot of attention to the edges and the colors; perhaps more than before, since I'm having to establish them actively rather than getting the shadows and letting the lights take care of themselves.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-3923344079574219642013-04-29T21:34:00.003-07:002013-04-29T21:34:30.189-07:00Casein Sketch, Krak des Chevaliers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="fbPhotoCaptionText">Got inspired by James Gurney's outdoor
casein sketch to haul out the caseins again. I'm trying to get used to
the color shift again after working in oils for a while, but it's fun.
This is from a photo (not mine) of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak_des_Chevaliers" target="_blank">Krak des Chevaliers</a>, a medieval
Crusader castle in Syria. Thinking enviously of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Parkes_Bonington" target="_blank">Richard Parkes Bonington</a> and his amazing light. Caseins are a great medium for having fun--they dry absolutely matte, so they reproduce really well, and it forces you to consider your colors much more seriously than the glossy mediums like oil and acrylic because it's too easy to let the gloss "enrich" the color for you. I'm hoping these essays into casein are going to help me stay honest, color-wise.</span><br />
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<span class="fbPhotoCaptionText">I've taken to making up my own casein medium from powder. It's not hard, and a lot cheaper than the prepared stuff. This batch was made with casein powder soaked in tap water for a while, then mixed with a hot saturated solution of "40 Mule Team" borax. It turns into a honey-like syrup that's fun to smear around. The cool thing is that the borax also keeps the stuff from rotting for quite a while. You can make casein using ammonia or ammonium nitrate as well, but it's really prone to rotting and stinks of ammonia unless you heat it to drive it all off. Basically just making the stink go really bad for a shorter time. I've got a parrot, so I prefer to avoid those sorts of things.</span><br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-86901915460550049882012-10-20T20:09:00.001-07:002012-10-21T14:44:17.533-07:00Day 39, and broccoli<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I don't recall having tried to paint broccoli before, which is odd since we always have it around because the parrot loves it. He alternates between liking the florets or the stems, though, and whichever part is his current favorite, the other part becomes anathema to him.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-64627489194659585372012-10-20T20:05:00.002-07:002012-10-20T20:05:21.083-07:00Day 37 and Some More Tomatilloes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Green is such a fun color to paint. Utterly frustrating and infuriating, but fun. And painting on a super-slick surface has its drawbacks, aswell. The paint goes down easy, but comes up just as fast, requiring some tricky brush maneuvering to keep it applying well. Sort of like trying to put down a long roll of fly-paper, or vintage chewing gum.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-34947923807970680402012-10-13T19:13:00.000-07:002012-10-13T19:13:08.001-07:00Day 36--Another Landscape<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Just some fun with a layered landscape -foreground, middle-ground,
background--in which the layers separate out completely and absolutely.
It's also a view of my favorite marsh: Jacobs Point.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-71059224260594116332012-10-13T19:12:00.001-07:002012-10-13T19:12:18.368-07:00Day 35--A Landscape<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've realized that I don't often paint skies, which is odd since I love looking at them and constantly photograph and sketch them. This is a step toward addressing that lack, and a lot of fun to paint. It was just a really gorgeous late-winter day on the marsh with a lot of crisply-defined and clear-cut clouds. A fun mixture of blues, whites and grays.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-83341382122400654042012-09-15T21:37:00.001-07:002012-09-15T21:40:38.201-07:00Day 34--Tomatillos<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I love tomatillos, and I love the salsa you can make with them. For painting, the contrast between the apple-green and incredibly waxy/glossy skin of the fruit and the papery translucence of the covering husk is enticing in and of itself. The board this was painted on had a very glossy surface, leading to the brush scraping off almost as much paint as it put down. Ordinarily the way around this is to pile on more paint until you're painting on and into paint (Sargent's maxim that the brush should never touch the canvas, only the paint), but I thought I'd like to use the scrapiness to try to depict the papery grain of the tomatillo husks, with limited success.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-9218797311499326882012-09-15T21:34:00.002-07:002012-09-15T21:34:43.562-07:00Day 33--Perfume<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I love perfume. And cologne and <i>eau de parfum</i> and any and all manner of smelly stuff. I love it for the history, I love it for the chemistry, I love it for the sheer sensual enjoyment, and I'm learning to love it for the wit, smarts, and creativity of its makers. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Perfumes-The-Guide-Luca-Turin/dp/0670018651" target="_blank">Perfumes: The Guide, by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez</a> is permanently installed in the bathroom library, and is a simply phenomenal book that critiques, in depth and with great precision and strong opinions, almost every perfume or scent available on the market.<br />
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This bottle came into my possession when it was deaccessioned by a friend who knew I like different shaped bottles to paint, as well. I used Dorland's Wax Medium to paint it with, as an experiment. Dorland's is a great, fun medium: a proprietary mix of beeswax and damar resin among other things, it's very smooth under the brush, translucent, and dries to a dead-matte finish that can be buffed to a semi-gloss if the wax is thick enough. I love painting matte, which is unusual for an oil painter, simply because I find it forces me to push contrasts and chroma more than when I can rely on a glossy surface to pump them. If ypu can make a painting look like it's been varnished before it's been varnished, you've got a decent effect there, and one that can actually be looked at in more lights without glare. I didn't quite succeed with this, hence the gauzy look, but it was really fun to try.<br />
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Unfortunately, Dorland's takes a bit of getting used to and dries very slowly, so I think I'm going to delay getting into it too deeply until I'm back to feeling more confident in my speed and skillz.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-11280592158251977362012-09-13T22:42:00.001-07:002012-09-13T22:42:32.631-07:00Day 32--Tea Tin<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
What does it say that when I do a good painting I almost feel guilty? I mean, I know I can paint metal pretty well, so it's almost a stunt of the sort that<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-93053XH7aGP_ReXIjtxM5UGH_Lg_tMrQOh9nJjqQElsxO6diyJqlEUpyMLL1WuPKjDLIqmXLCTv3t6AlummYwhi_P6KgwSdccwvf85yzR-nNYYj6zFXXz9gpG0n3Jhu0H1rr5zzz-sk/s1600/zap_05_1970_robertwilliams_cv.jpg" target="_blank"> Robert Williams (of JUXTAPOZ fame) </a>used to pull in the 1960's. Still, after tormenting myself with the skulls for the last couple of days, I thought I could use a little buffing of my self-esteem. Usually I buff it along with my shoes, since it's right down there and accessible. The fun part of this was the alternating bands of dull and shiny metal.<br />
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I'm a big fan of caffeine, but unfortunately allergic to coffee and mate, so I drink a lot of tea. I get mine in bulk from <a href="http://www.uptontea.com/shopcart/home.asp?UTid=479-1-11682686&afterCart=/shopcart/home.asp&" target="_blank">Upton Tea</a>, and keep about six kinds always on hand and reasonably fresh in these tins. As such, the subject is near and dear to my heart.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-32996229118518709822012-09-13T22:25:00.004-07:002012-09-13T22:25:52.824-07:00Day 31--Coyote Skull (again)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A better result, at least in terms of finding the bone texture more clearly defined. It's always tough to paint thin, highly contrasting things like teeth in a decisive manner. You have to get it right on pretty much one stroke because any adjustment is really obvious and usually makes things worse, anyway. If you've thought ahead, or if it's really central to the painting, you can paint the teeth and other such shapes by using the negative space. In other words, put the small tooth down boldly, but then go back and make it smaller and clean up the edges by going around it with refining strokes that whittle away at it until you've got the right shape. Of course, this presupposes that you're using opaque paint (I usually do, but some colors, like some people, are more opaque than others) and that your shape isn't surrounded by other, equally small and tricky shapes, as teeth tend to be.</div>
Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-34199506523562639272012-09-09T21:35:00.000-07:002012-09-09T21:35:12.185-07:00Day 30--Coyote Skull<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Flush with success after the mango, I thought I might try another complex subject; this time a coyote skull. Of course I was somewhat overconfident, aka deluded. Naturally, I chose the most complex point of view: highly foreshortened, revealing lots of fine structures and concealing most of the flowing, larger forms. Oh, well. I got caught up in the interesting lighting on the turbinates of the nose. That's like saying that, in the commissioned portrait of the king, you became fascinated by the nose hairs.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-70119842783259664662012-09-08T17:21:00.004-07:002012-09-08T17:21:54.720-07:00Day 29--Mango <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It's a mango. Trying something less intimidating this time, with grater success. I'm finding that the super-smooth surface I have on the canvas boards--I cover the too-grainy cotton duck canvas with a coat of white stain-killing primer--presents interesting challenges for painting. Namely, if I paint too thin, I pick up a lot of the paint that just went down. Paradoxically, I get more control the thicker the paint. The trick is in balancing the effects gotten through thin paint with the effects gotten through thick paint.</div>
Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-73957112839581698552012-09-07T21:12:00.003-07:002012-09-07T21:12:39.145-07:00Day 28--Gateway to Day 29<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A friend who knows my love of crania gave me a raccoon skull he'd found. Quite clean and seemingly demanding to be painted, and yet it's taken....three years? for me to get around to it. And of course it's taken its revenge by being a completely baffling shape. Cursed skull, you shall not win! Not like that damn squirrel!</div>
Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-30233152407019771052012-09-05T18:45:00.004-07:002012-09-05T18:47:24.302-07:00Day 27--Starting Again<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Otherwise known as "pulling teeth". I've gotten too caught up in doing big paintings, with all the concomitant psychological baggage of is-it-good-enough and who-do-you-think-you're-fooling-anyway. Rather, I've gotten too caught up in not doing paintings, so it's back to the dailies to try to restore a little sanity and devil may care <i>joie de vivre</i> to the process. As I write this, I've been at it for eight days straight, with the expected mixed results, but as the paintings build up there's definitely a feeling that might almost be akin to cutting myself some slack. It's rare, but appreciated.<br />
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I painted a bird's nest because I look upon them as a sort of good omen--they're fun to paint, and they have a sort of casual quality that belies the great labor it takes to construct them, which is something I'd dearly like to emulate.<br />
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Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-16723008043039554282012-07-04T16:45:00.001-07:002012-07-04T16:45:27.716-07:00Gouache Sketch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've loved gouache for years, but never had too much enjoyment working in it. Part of the trouble is how radically the colors change when the paint dries, but that wears off after a little while, and you start just accommodating the change automatically. The biggest part of the trouble is the beautiful, expensive sable brushes one uses to paint with it. The problem isn't the brushes themselves. Far from it. Sables are wonderful, responsive brushes capable of a wide range of expression. But they have a "right" and a "wrong" way to use them: drag, don't push; work from the elbow as much as possible, etc. I find that this makes me too darn precious. I tighten up, and the work becomes utterly tense.<br />
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So, I bought a couple of inexpensive bristle brushes, sawed them off short and urethaned the ends.I figured that it would be a good way to exploit my comfort with bristles from my work with oil. It worked. I had more fun doing this little gouache than I've had in quite a long time. We went to visit a couple of friends in Westport, Mass, and I got to take a little time to sketch some of the tiger lilies in their beautiful rented garden.<br />
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<br /></div>Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-134127202894648272012-06-21T22:09:00.002-07:002012-06-21T22:16:33.842-07:00Winter Marsh<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've been trying to document how I paint. I'm actually kind of curious about it since in a very real sense, I'm not there. I've set up a webcam and an old laptop<br />
running Linux Mint and the 'Cheese' application to do image captures at about five-second intervals, and assembled them into video using Blender. So, all free, open-source, etc. Here's my first attempt. I set it to shoot 600 frames, which unfortunately didn't go for as long as I painted. And, yes, everything is improved by the presence of "Yakety Sax".<br />
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And here's the painting. Several people whose opinions I respect have told me to leave it alone, even though it's not quite doing what I wanted it to do. Rather than mess with it further, I'm just going to paint the same subject again, and see if it's different and which I like better. Much more relaxing all 'round.<br />
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<br /></div>Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-83420189582168941462012-03-11T20:41:00.001-07:002012-03-11T20:41:13.569-07:00Day 26<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Oh, boy, sometimes things are just irredeemable. I like the way peppers look with the smooth, almost car-like finish and seductively curved surfaces, but I think that should probably have cued me in to NOT PAINT ONE. Smooth, shiny, curvy surfaces are not hard to paint, precisely, but they require real attention to detail, something that's really tough to do in a half-hour study. So....yes, it's an attempt at a pepper. Bleah.<br />
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<br /></div>Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-74495999569840631532012-02-22T22:53:00.000-08:002012-02-22T22:54:40.265-08:00Day 25<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
White on white. A color scheme first proposed by James McNeill Whistler, but somehow I don't suppose he ever ate a clove of garlic in his life. He might have, though, on his continental travels. Personally, I love garlic, although I don't go so far in poeticizing it as the "stinking rose" folks. I just eat it. Lots of it. It's getting harder and harder to find the American variety around here, though, as it's being forced out by the sharper Chinese variety in the supermarkets. I love Chinese garlic in Asian recipes like Laab and so on, but it doesn't roast as sweetly as the California bulbs, to my taste. Still, they're all beautiful to paint and the papery coats are just gorgeous. In this one, I got really into laying the white on thickly to capture the soft highlights of the bulb. OK, now I've made myself hungry.....<br />
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<br /></div>Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-48721313907240558652012-02-17T14:57:00.000-08:002012-02-17T14:57:21.921-08:00Day 24<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Well, it's a bit of a wrench.<br />
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</div>Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-13380069161274030402012-02-16T09:52:00.000-08:002012-02-16T09:52:48.801-08:00Day 23<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">To quote the great philosopher Don Hertzfeldt, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeBxmoJ73UI" target="_blank">"I...am a banana!"</a> I love the color yellow, primarily because it seems to cheer me up, speaking as it does of things I like: Spring, Fall, and tropical fruit. Yellow is also a pain in the butt to shade, since you really have to keep a close eye on the color temperature of the shading as you go. Too warm, and it looks "glowy", too cool and it gets sort of dead and moldy looking. In these pieces recently, I've been using up a tube of Hansa Yellow Light as my base yellow color. It's not my favorite yellow, since its tinting strength is relatively weak, but it sure makes you think when painting, which is always a good thing when doing exercises like this.<br />
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</div>Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-14924666471374911052012-02-15T21:28:00.000-08:002012-02-15T21:28:31.173-08:00Day 22<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The onions again. I'm beginning to feel that I'm winning.<br />
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</div>Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612554249950488978.post-84602958446702981212012-02-10T23:53:00.000-08:002012-02-10T23:53:14.177-08:00Day 21<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">A painting of a poppy from last Summer. I miss Summer and I love poppies, so it was just sheer self-indulgence to paint this. It's also a lot of fun to use knife techniques to suggest various textures. I still feel like it's cheating, but it does get effective results.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>Nick Jainschigghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05605536593668106140noreply@blogger.com0