Scumbling

When I made the last painting, I had a brilliantly colored natural landscape with which I could fill the composition. With this painting, I have a relatively monochromatic interior space. The beams and and architecture add some interest to it, but if I just paint it brown and call it good, I think I'll be in trouble. Instead, I plan to do quite a bit more layering to create background space that is more dynamic. In the image above oranges, greens, and violets are visible. I'm borrowing a technique from my thesis professor at Utah State University, Christopher T. Terry. Professor Terry paints still life and interiors that many would consider empty compositions. Visually, his paintings are resplendent with color, but in an understated way. Certainly they're not gaudy or flashy in the way that many self-consciously colorful paintings can be. In his paintings, an ochre wall reveals itself to be layer upon layer of ceruleans, violets, and oranges. It is a technique that rewards contemplation and close inspection.

A word that painters use to describe such a process is Scumbling. Very similar to glazing, scumbling refers to the broken application of an opaque color. It's a technique I teach at the tail end of my Painting I class at Siena College. Below is an example of student work from this class.