Jade D20 Painting: Texture Building with Impasto Medium

Dead Layer

Continuing to work on the Jade D20 painting. After the wipeout there’s a so-called dead layer. I generally work with a monochromatic gradient for this first layer. This allows a chance to get the drawing a little more dialed in and start to mass in the light and dark regions without having to worry to much about temperature or hue that will come in the chromatic layers later.

The first few sessions usually go pretty quickly unless there is a lot of small details that need to be captured. I’ve been working a lot on this one as it’s pretty simple until the later layers. This is a gradient of burnt umber and unbleached titanium set into a couch of thinned transparent red oxide.

I like to use burnt umber as a gradient color because it dries much faster than most other oil paint pigments as well as being relatively dark and warm.

I tend to use unbleached titanium because it isn’t quite as overpowering as titanium white and not nearly as cold. I tend to prefer working on a warm layer when adding in the chromatic layers on top, particularly when the subject is relatively cool anyway — as it is with a jade icosahedron.

First Chromatic Layer

This is the first pass at a chromatic layer. I’m trying to find a green base tone that will serve for the main mass. Viridian green seems to be the winner here. I’ve darkened it with a mixed black comprised of burnt umber and ultramarine blue. Lighten the greens with lead white. I’ve mixed in a bit of Chrome Green as well but that seems to have warmed the green hue a little too much.

Building Texture

Continuing to work… more Viridian and a touch of Chrome Green in the turnings. I’ve added in some impasto medium to try to build up the texture in the light masses. I think it’s starting to work but still feels a little too much like brush-stroke patterns rather than a variegated surface of natural gemstone. I’ve tried hard not to lose the solidity of the stone here, something that can happen at this point is for the image to start to flatten out.

I’ve also gone with a simple warm purple glaze in the background of Manganese Violet. I think a simple background will work better here if there’s a lot of texture in the subject.

A lot of progress on this one, and I’m hopeful that in the next pass I can get the lightmass faces to read as surfaces and not as paint strokes. I tend to paint very thinly so this is a good exercise for me as an artist.