Now comes the stage that drives me mad.
Layering is the heart of how I paint, and it is slow, deliberate work. I begin with very thin paint — almost a wash — and I don’t touch detail at all. Not yet. I’m only interested in tone. I work from the darkest shadows first, getting all of those placed, and then I gradually work my way toward the light. I almost always work with a strong light source coming from the left, partly because of how my studio is set up, and partly because it’s simply how I see.
I usually lay this first tonal layer in sepia. Then I step back and look. Really look. This is still an early enough stage to take a rag, rub something out, and start again if something isn’t working. I do that without hesitation. The painting will tell you when something is wrong, if you’re willing to listen.
Once I’m happy with the tonal foundation, I start thinking seriously about colour. I work with a very limited palette — sometimes only two or three colours. I never use black. For my deepest darks I reach for a very dark brown, and for my lights, rather than straight white, I’ll use a lemony yellow mixed with a touch of white, or occasionally a bold colour thinned right down to a whisper. Gradually the paint thickens. The texture builds. The painting starts to breathe.
This stage can take weeks. Sometimes months. There are days when it feels like it will never resolve. But it always does, eventually.
VI. The Final Glaze
After all of that — the years of thinking, the research, the composition, the drawing, the long months of layering — there is one last stage, and it requires patience of a different kind. I glaze. Using a Damar glaze, I work carefully over the surface of the painting,...
IV. Drawing in Blood
Once I have my reference, the drawing begins. I usually work in charcoal, fixing it carefully so it doesn't bleed into the paint layers that follow. But sometimes I reach for a pastel pencil called sanguine - derived from the Latin word that means blood. There is...
III. Choosing the Model
The model is never an afterthought. I choose who I work with carefully, because the right person has to carry the emotional thread that has been running through the painting in my mind, sometimes for years. When I'm ready, I spend a whole day with my model — taking...
II. The Sweet Spot
There is a moment, early in every painting, where I do something that might seem a little mathematical for an emotional painter: . On a blank canvas, I map out the Pythagoras division of the rectangle to find the sweet spots. precise lines, carefully drawn. Where...
I. Before the Brush Touches Canvas
A painting begins long before there is any paint. For me, the real work happens in the quiet. In the weeks, months, sometimes years before I ever stand in front of a canvas. I am an emotional painter. I paint what I feel. And feelings, as anyone knows, cannot be...