Demonstration of Painting Technique

This is my version of an old technique using layers of colour to produce optical greys. In this painting I used acrylic on paper, and I mixed my paints with lots of medium.

• Black and White Ink drawing

  
  This is the most important stage. I started off with a pencil drawing. This was the most work involved, since at this stage I make my mistakes and correct them. When I was satisfied with the composition, I used India Ink, water, and a brush to make a very strong drawing that would show up under think layers of paint.

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• Adding Grey

  
  To make the drawing more uniform, and to have more exact control over highlights, I filled in the white spaces with grey paint.

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• Adding White again

  
  Now I brought out the highlights with white paint. I now have shadows, midtones, and highlights in grey.

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• Adding Red

  
  This is the first transparent layer. I mix the red paint with acrylic medium and smear it uniformly (as uniformly as possible) over the whole painting.

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• Adding White on top of Red

  
  Now I use white paint (sparingly) to bring out the highlights again. The highlighted areas are smaller than they were in the previous step where I applied light

• Adding Yellow

  
  Now I spread transparent yellow over the whole painting.

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• Adding White on top of Yellow

  
  Now I add white highlights, but the highlighted areas are even smaller this time, each contained within previously highlighted areas.

• Adding Blue

  Now I add a layer of transparent blue. Anything I do after this is optional.