The Canvas Part III

I'm entering the home stretch... by that I mean that I'll soon be able to paint on the canvas I've been assembling over the past month. The last step in the process is the application of the imprimatura. That's a fancy way of saying that I'm tinting the white ground with another color. This is the fastest drying component of the priming process, and probably the most fun. I get to smear and scrape paint over canvas. It helps to be aggressive and grind the paint into canvas. This allows for a very thin and fully bound paint film. Over dilution with solvent (OMS) or an oil medium will lead to a cracking, or "alligatoring" paint film. It goes on pretty glossy, but will dry flat. 

The purpose of the imprimatura is mainly to obscure the white (making it easier to gauge color mixtures) and to provide unity to the composition where it breaks through.

On another subject, you can see a bit of a head study I've painted of Lauren in the photograph above. I'll post pictures of a completed study at a later date. Stay tuned.