I Finally Have A Command Of The Velazquez Palette. Finally.

It's Diego Velazquez! 

I've been practicing art seriously since the age of 10 and properly executing the Velazquez Palette is by far the most challenging thing I have taken on in adulthood. This isn't counting the hundreds of hours as a early teen trying to draw realistically, that was extremely challenging, I remember when I was young being constantly frustrated with my limited skills. I've spent the past year growing a lot technically as a painter trying to master the Velazquez Palette. It's been really hard, and I found myself repainting an image at least 20 times. I found a boy to use as a model for my VHS series and had pictures taken of him at a studio in the Valley. I had the guys that worked there do the lighting and I was really into Caravaggio at the time with his dramatic lighting, so the model has dramatic shadows on half his face. 

        My first attempts didn't come out the way I wanted them to and I've talked to enough art dealers to know that I won't get anywhere if my art looks less than perfect. The tones in the shadowy areas were kind of like a cement gray and looked very unnatural, too cold. I knew it wasn't good enough. What cause the biggest challenge at first was the fact that I was working from a picture, and it's nearly impossible to get the accurate tones in the shadows. I don't think it helped that I had them developed at Walgreens though. 

      I never had a problem executing skin tones before this, but the shadows weren't as dramatic as in the VHS series. The only way I really grew and was able to execute the Velasquez palette properly was by staring at my legs for a significant amount of time and only when the lighting was really dynamic like in Caravaggio's paintings. I found myself staring at my legs (and sometimes my arms) and memorizing the tones present in the shadows. Then I would paint what I remembered. The major changes that came of that was deeper reds in pockets of the shadows. It really made the painting feel alive. The red could only be used sparingly though. I also added a lot more yellow to the shadows, making the colors less cool and more warm. It really was so much trial and error in the process. 

 I also realized that shades of a certain color in the shadows should be small, for example if the cheek was in a shadow it looks best when it has more facets of closely related shades, a lot of the time with more yellow in the tone if it's closer to an area which is well lit. Before I used to clump up a whole shaded area in one hue and it just didn't look right, and I learned the shadows looked a lot better with multifaceted tones that are closely related.  

 

    I never thought the Velasquez palette would be so challenging. I had no idea it would be this challenging, it was 5 times harder then the painting I did of the metallic optical thingy in Macular Generation. I guess you could say I'm glad I grew as an artist, but it really slowed my progress down because I literally had to paint it over 20 times. Ce la vie. 

    The reason I don't have art work from gallery visits is because I had a really fun summer traveling and hiking on weekends. I hope you had a fun summer too.