My Flemish Technique

Okay - just because you asked...here's how I did the apple.

I called it a Flemish technique, but really it's quite heavily modified - first the traditional technique is in oils, and I'm using acrylics, and second, I'm impatient and undisciplined...if you want to know more about the real thing, take a look here.

So, anyway - here we go...

My step 1, which is really like 3 steps - the drawing, the imprimatura (which is really just toning the canvas) and the umber layer to establish the lights and darks.

Next up is the dead layer. Now - having done this, I think I could have completely skipped the umber and gone straight to the dead layer - seems a bit redundant to me. This is really the meat of the painting - I used Payne's Gray and white gesso here - and really worked to model the form. This is also where the most time was spent - revising shape, shadow and highlight. At the end of this stage is really a nice painting - only in grayscale...

Now I started glazing color onto the painting. I used a very heavy glaze - that is a lot of glaze to a little paint. I probably could have done with less glaze, but I wanted to make sure I didn't go too thickly here...next time I'll probably use more color...

The last layer consists of the most opaque paint - mostly in highlights and areas that need re-defining after all those color layers. So, this is where I ended up...

I was inspired to try this after looking at the artwork of Mark Woodland - go check out his site!