Recently I began work on a tree of life for an exhibition in which I am taking part. The exhibition will be called 'From the Earth' and held at Nunnington Hall in North Yorkshire in Spring 2024.
Tree of life acrylic underpainting
I started off with an acrylic underpainting to block in the main shapes of the picture. At this point I was not exactly sure what the completed painting would look like.
Next I switch to water-mixable oils and add some more blocks. I had the idea that on either side of the tree, inside the circle, would be night and day. In the outside of the circle would be the seasons. Wintry ice on top right. Spring green bottom right. Summer colours bottom left. Autumn gold top left.
Water based oil palette
The palette of colours used was:
Yellow?
Lemon yellow
Green
King's blue
Ultramarine blue
Violet
Primary magenta
Pyrrole red
Orange
Yellow ochre
Earth??
Titanium white.
Zinc white.
As the paints were water mixable I tried thinning them with water and it does work, though the paints change colour slightly, making it more difficult to judge the mix you are making. My advice is to mix the right colour first, then add water to thin it. I noticed also the strange phenomenon that although the paints do thin with water, they don't paint onto the canvas as smoothly as they would if mixed with conventional solvents or linseed oil. So it is difficult to get a smooth consistent layer with these paints just mixed with water. I found myself using the water mixable medium to achieve that.
Water-mixable oils definitely dry much quicker on the canvas, and are dry to the touch within one to two days. This enables the painter to work more quickly with these paints, in a manner similar to acrylics. However a drawback with this is that the paints also dry rapidly on the palette, meaning that more paint is wasted than with traditional oil paints. Also the paint on the palette and in mixes tends to form a skin after a day or so, which then when broken causes bits of semi-dry paint to mix in with the colours one is trying to paint onto the canvas. This is an annoyance.
The pigment load of Cobra paints does not seem to be high, or maybe that is a side-effect of them being water mixable. I found that for covering power I could not quite get the results from them that I wanted.
As with acrylic paints I found it difficult to get the sort of control with water-mixable oils, that I am used to with conventional oils. Paint thinned with water soon thickens on the brush as the water evaporates, and paint thinned on the palette also thickens quickly as the water disappears. The water-mixable medium is too thick for fine detail work. Maybe there is a water-mixable oil medium specially designed for detail work? Who knows.
Anyways, I added some more detail to the painting. Some snowflakes in the Winter part at top right. Some buds in the Spring part at bottom right. Also I began adding Autumn leaves at top left. At the bottom I added a network of roots beneath the tree and gave them a swirl via some artistic license. To the right of the tree it is dark representing night and to the left is is light representing day. The moon and the sun reinforce this. So this painting is a metaphor for nature, the seasons, and the natural passage of time between night and day, season and season. Time passes and nature adapts and changes, reshaping itself.
Here I add some more detail to the autumn leaves and begin to add the flowers for the summer section. Also some icicles in the winter section.
This painting is now completed.