Painting The Glowing Druid

Here are a few progress photos of a recent painting, The Glowing Druid. I’ve included some info along with the photos of the stages.

The first photo here shows some textural build-up as well as a little bit of painting on top of that. The initial texture was added with white heavy body acrylic onto a smooth pre-gessoed masonite panel. I applied the acrylic paint with a palette knife, made some strokes through some areas with a course bristle brush, and carved some marks into it also with a spatula and brush handle. After that dried, I added the burnt umber oil paint and carved and wiped away until I had an interesting abstract underpainting I felt would be fun to work into.

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As I added and carved out some more, I began to see a tree shape emerge, though it had a different sort of feel especially in the limbs being more snake-like in areas. In this stage, I was working with a limited earth tone palette of burnt umber, transparent red iron oxide, and black. I had added a bit of white highlights on the forms after the darks had dried, but decided to wipe that away and begin again in that center. As I wiped away, I liked the way the white appeared ghostly, so I thought I’d try again and actually attempt a bit of a glowy sort of effect there. In those textural marks, I saw a figure but wanted to keep the figure more abstract and less defined, as if a spirit was there.

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I added this light greenish-blue and at first wasn’t sure I liked it, but I did love the texture there and felt that if I just added more of that light turquoise color that it may get the effect that I was hoping for, as if the figure was a spirit. In order to achieve the effect of glow and contrast, this would also mean that I might need to darken the surrounding tree forms as well.

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I wanted to also have the limbs appear to be an indication of the spirit’s limbs, but just faintly, and fade off into the tree limbs. This detail helps to see that build up and layering of the glowing effect in the turquoise. It took many layers to build up the paint in order to accomplish the glow effect. Some of that color was added only to the raised areas of texture, while in other areas, the paint covered both the raised and lowered areas of texture.

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You can see some variance in the green-blue-turquoise, some more blue, some more green and some more yellow, all very subtle. The layering in this area was done using the varying color shifts in very thin veils. The surrounding tree and limb forms were also built up in thin veils as well but with dark colors to build depth, with less paint in the areas of the form that appear to come forward. The lightest areas in the dark forms of the tree were not done by using lighter paint, but in using less paint covering there and allowing for the surface to show through. The warmer tones are done using the transparent red iron oxide. At this stage, I had not added the turquoise to the egg/orb forms that are tucked into the limbs of the tree yet, but I was seeing them nestled in everywhere.

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This image shows a closer view of the egg shapes as they are being built up. Again, in very thin veils of color. You can also see the subtle shifts in color both in that turquoise as well as in the dark earth tones of the tree and limbs. The bit of color in the light glow of the background (seen in this image just underneath the brush) was done with a mixture of white, cadmium yellow-orange and a hint of cadmium red light right along the edge where the dark of the tree meets the light of the atmosphere. If you’re interested in the colors I used for the glowing green areas, they are: viridian + white, ultramarine + white, viridian + white + cad yellow pale, viridian + radiant green + white, ultramarine + radiant green +white, and in the areas where they green is fading over the limbs, I combined a hint of transparent red iron oxide with some of the mixtures I mentioned too.

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The final image shows a bit more of those areas of golden glow in the atmosphere near the tree edges in some spots and the turquoise egg shapes finding their way nestled into the limbs. The glow of the druid figure was achieved by many painting layers of lights as well as a back and forth of subtle values along those edges to create a very soft fade from light to dark, utilizing the noise of the texture to also describe the gradient. I wanted the druid to appear as if a spirit and not a solid formed figure, as if something we might see a glimpse of in the corner of our eye, and when we look directly at it, it might not be there or rather, it might be more like a ray of light we thought was a figure for a split second. And I felt that the egg/orb forms should take that sort of shape too, as if at one instance in the corner of our eye, they are there and nestled in, and in another instance when we stop to allow things to focus, they might become dappled light or the light we see in spaces between the limbs of a tree.  And as we stop for a moment to think about what we are looking at, we think well maybe we’ve just experienced a sort of magic there in that moment.

I’ve always felt a strong sense of magic in a field of oaks and being underneath that canopy as their limbs stretched over pathways in groves. As a kid, growing up in a town filled with oaks all around, I’d make up all kinds of stories of what I’d see in the contrast of limbs and lighting. From fairies and druids to magical orbs and tiny flying creatures, even some dark and spooky depths to adventure in. I hope this image conveyed a bit of that, and overall a sense of magic.