Monday, 17-Oct-11 22:27:00 CEST

Little smile of Vikta

Last year when I started to experiment with various panels to use for oil paint I bought hardwood plywood panels and MDF panels. MDF stands for Medium Density Fiberboard. I made some paintings on the MDF but I found that it was not something for me so I decided to concentrate on the hardwood plywood. The advantage of the hardwood is that they absorb the paint so the paintings are finished quicker with hardwood. The MDF has a very hard surface and it absorbs almost nothing.

The MDF panels have so far been to no use for me. Now I have progressed a bit in my oil painting skills and I figured out what not to do; for example start painting at a location without first arranging a way of bringing the wet panel’s home. Another easy solution is to paint at home and let the panel dry at home.

I prepared the MDF panels with gesso so the surface had an interesting fine grain. It is possible to make smooth transitions and soft shapes on the MDF so I thought I give it another try. Here is a portrait I found on the Internet. The models name is Vikta. With live model sessions you don’t get so much of a chance to paint a smile because after a couple of hours a model is not smiling anymore so it is nice to paint from a photo if you want to practice to paint a little smile. The girl on the photo had a much nicer smile than I could produce. Plenty of room for improvement. On my painting she looks older.

The most important lesson I learned here was that it is not enough with measuring once while making the sketch. It is also important to measure a couple of times while painting. This is something I will try to work according to from now on.

One of these things I use to measure while making the sketch is the vertical middle line of the face. I make sure that eyes and mouth are at right angles towards the middle line (taking perspective into account). When painting the face of Vikta I was drifting away from these aiming lines while painting. So from now on I need to recalculate these aiming lines from time to time.

Working with the oil paint on the MDF was nice. I could modulate the smooth skin. At some point you almost get the feeling of applying makeup on the models face. That is a less far-fetched idea than you might think since the Cobra oil paint is based on a water soil able oil emulsion – similar to what you can find in many skin care products. On my painting the skin became a bit too pink. Oh well, I learned something and I made good use of that MDF panel.

I made this painting on 11th of October 2011. The panel is 30 by 40cm.