Friday, October 28, 2011

Sarah: Painted from Life Using The Zorn Palette



I have been trying to pare down and simplify my life paintings in many ways such as the use of larger brushes and starker compositions, and more and more through the means of a limited palette.
The purpose of limiting the palette is for me mostly to do with attempting to achieve a harmonious colour scheme, where my mixed colours are all in the same family, rather than being taken straight from tubes where they might jar with each other.
This is to do with the inherent flavour of that each tube of paint has. And with developemnts in science there have been dozens of new colours created that we can choose from.
Some colours are acidy, some are are intense or full bodied (yes, it's a lot like discussing the taste of wine) but mixing them together can be artistically perilous unless you really know what you are doing.
I choose to work with only a few pigments so that I can concentrate on other elements of the picture.
Anders Zorn (1860 – 1920)was a tremendously vigorous and talented painter who is often compared to the great John Singer Sargent. Zorn was famous for using a very limited palette of white, black, yellow ochre and Cadmium Red. Obviously he used additional pigments when necessary, but I was interested to try a painting using the famous Zorn palette.
This sketch of Sarah is the first result.
I think I need a lot more practice with this palette, I particularly missed having Cerulean Blue to cool down some shadows in the flesh.

4 comments:

Candace X. Moore said...

Very successful painting, PJ. The drawing and anatomy are perfect. Good reminder about the limited palette. I'm in a figure painting class right now, and this is the advise I needed to hear. Good post.

PJ Lynch said...

I'm delighted that you liked it Candace.
I will be interested to see how you get on with it. I really haven't missed green since I banned it from my life room palette, but doing without blue is really difficult.
All the best
PJ

Ciaran Hughes said...

I think this is really going somewhere - bolder and stronger for all the limitations

PJ Lynch said...

Many thanks Barney!
PJ