Born With Wings: Step 11
Painting close fitting clothing can be deceptively tricky. A few wrinkles out of place, and the figure can look a bit misshapen underneath. That said, I really enjoyed painting the shirt because it seemed to pull a lot of loose ends together, and effectively completed the top half of the canvas. The more primer is covered by finished painting, the more the colors begin to work together. When I first started painting in oils, I struggled with light colored items, especially whites. The shadow areas always looked muddy, and the highlights never really very white. It seems obvious now, but what I had failed to observe was that looking at a white shirt, even the darkest shadows are far from black and the mid-tones reflect the colors around them much more than you would think. I started mixing the colors on the light side, and reserving the darker tones until the item was all but finished. I found that often I didn’t even use the darkest few shades on the palette. To avoid the muddiness, I switched from trying to work darks into lights to working lights into darks. Titanium white (if you use a good brand of paint) is actually strong enough to overpower a lot of other pigments.
Tags: Born With Wings, Bryan Larsen
