Painting corduroy

I can't say I always know what colors to choose, especially the greens. So I gathered eleven likely tubes and proceeded to test them out. I've got a bit of the same #13 Claussens linen taped to a board for just this purpose. I put down a small square of pure color, right from the tube and next to it, a little mixed with white.

If you dabble about in oil colors you know that the transparency of various colors (and manufacturers) varies quite a bit. Greens are a case in point. The darkest varieties, viridian and phthalo are really quite transparent (you can see the canvas easily through them.) Whereas cadmiums are quite opaque, but much lighter in value.

I chose Windsor Newton cadmium green mixed with W.N. phthalo green for my base warm green and W.N. phthalo mixed with Williamsburg Veronese green for my cool green base. The base values are about 7 or 8 on a scale of 10 (with the darkest 10.) I darkened the warm base with W.N. indigo for a rich dark green, darker than black. I mixed up the lighter highlight colors, warm and cool, to a value of about 5 or 6 on that same scale. I used W.N. cadmium green pale and Sennelier permanent yellow green mixed with the warm base for the warm highlights and Veronese green and white mixed with the cool base for the cool highlights. Here's a color tip: If you ever need to cool a green, use a little bit of white – white cools green. Crazy, huh?

Here's the weird thing, I always find it hard to start. I also find it hard to stop. The trick is to do the prep work: study your subject to determine the values, I use a homemade value scale like they make you do in color theory; look for what's warm and what's cool; take a look at the texture, is it soft or hard, and fix it in your mind where you'll use soft and hard edges; mix a basic value range of colors. By then your warmed up and ready to put paint to the canvas.

I put in the darks first, thinly, around her waist and in the shadows on her legs. I used a small bristle brush, well trimmed to a nice edge, to mark the lines around her pockets and seams. I filled in the base colors and highlights alternately, scrubbing the paint on carefully, but not obsessing on detail, looking mostly to fill in the shapes and cover most of the pant area.

At this point I went over all the newly painted area with a soft fan brush, in a downward motion, to smooth the surface and soften the strokes. Then I took a soft, fat filbert and worked on correcting the values and color. My aim is to keep it soft so it looks like corduroy. I only put in a few details, fine shadowing and highlights where the surface of the fabric buckles on the pocket seams, the line of the zipper and the seam on the upturned portion of pants near her feet.

That's about all I accomplished, it was time to stop, as I was losing the light. I don't dare use artificial lighting on this painting, it would just really screw it up at this point. I still have to do some refining, like where her shirt meets her pants. I still need to work on her left sleeve and her dolly's pants as well, but I might tackle the background first.