Underpainting Process

"John, Dear" is one of my favorite paintings.  I grew up in a family where the TV was always on, and if sports were on, particularly if the Yankees were playing, there was no way my mom and I were going to get any real attention from my dad until the game was over. 

I love television- people get to sit down and zone out after a hard days work, and though they are closed off to others in one sense that their mind isn't focused on whoever they are with but in the show, they are completely vulnerable in another way, because physically they are so relaxed and immersed in something outside of themselves.

Here was my process:

1st I painted a gestural sketch of the people, making sure the composition was pleasing through the placement and flow of shapes.  I used viridian green because I wanted a cool green glow to come through in the finished piece. 

Once my shapes were in places that made me happy, I added darks using viridian green and alizarin crimson to create lovely rich shadows that are sort of dark purple.  I used more viridian for the details in the faces, because i didn't want them to get to red. 

I went into the flesh, using cad red light and medium, yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, and added cobalt blue, viridian green, ultramarine blue, and paynes grey to cool it down.  I was going to have a quilt on the couch, but decided against it later.  I wanted the brushwork to have noise to it so that this painting could sound like static on a TV ( but not too loud because that would be annoying), so I made each brushstroke visible and crowded contrasting values toward the edges of the painting, though this is pretty subtle.