Preparing to Paint.

This first photo shows the layers of acrylic I'd applied, leaving each one to dry before adding another. They were applied rather thinly, mixed with a bit of water, as I wanted to keep the canvas as smooth as possible in order to not have any lumps that would snag the plastering tool when dragging the oils across the canvas in the last stage.



At the final moment I decided to add a layer of black paint on top of all these colours because I felt that I wanted to preserve the purity of the blue oil paints that would be the top layer. I felt that the mixture or reds and greens would be a distraction and not a complimentary element. I'm glad I painted so many layers of acrylic in the first place as it's given such stability to the painting, and depth of colour that wouldn't have been so effective if I had layered only black paint underneath.

This second photo shows the oil paints laid out on the canvas ready to be dragged across. The four horizontal stripes are the four different coloured blues that I used; french ultramarine, pthalo blue, windsor blue and pthalo turquoise. The white was for the stripe cutting through the middle of these blues. You can see the black paint underneath, still showing glimmers of other colours such as the reds and blues, but I'm now glad in hindsight that I made it this dark.