Renata on the chair

Renata is an excellent professional artist's model, I have completed several paintings with her, & countless drawings. In this painting I am again concerned with the juxtaposition of large areas of cool colours against other areas of warm colour.

When I was studying Rembrandt's materials & techniques for my doctoral dissertation, I discovered that he used a unique ground on his canvas. It was made of ground sand, linseed oil, & pigments. When I tried it, it was revelatory! I have since used this ground with its lovely texture & absorbency for many of my own paintings, but I have also experimented with variations.

This painting of Renna on the chair is one of a series where I am using animal skin glue & sand for ground. It has more texture than Rembrandt's but gives opportunity for subtle gradations using frottage. That is, lightly brushing the surface with a dry brush over another layer of paint capturing only the peaks of the texture. This allows the first layer to show through subsequent layers. You can also do the reverse, brush on with a wet brush, & then remove from the peaks with a rag. The kind of texture supplied here by the sandy ground provides an interesting effect, by increasing the surface area the colours become more saturated--difficult to appreciate in the photos, but evident in real life.