ANATOMY OF A PAINTING - 1

For quite a while I've been thinking about showing what goes into a painting.
And now's my chance, because Heather - who lives in Cape Town - has asked me to do an acrylic along the lines of Van Gogh's 'Peach Trees in Blossom'. Van Gogh painted this work near La Crau at the western end of Provence (known as the Var) in 1889.

So, this posting shows how I get started, and if all goes according to plan, I'll post more photographs as the painting develops.

Unfortunately this first part is the boring bit, but, except for watercolours, it's the background - literally - and it's what goes into all the paintings I produce.

1. A shot of the raw canvas taken in my orderly, neat, clean and tidy studio.
2. The raw canvas is sized (twice) with a fairly thin undercoat.
3. Then I add a thicker undercoat (in this case cadmium yellow).

Still to come in this sequence: The outline of the composition comes next. And then I start the underpainting. After that I add layer upon layer of pointellist pigment.

Keep watching this space!