Tiger Tiger

"Tiger, Tiger burning bright in the forest of the night..." William Blake

I know its been a while since I've posted. Life has been kinda crazy but this past weekend I got some time to start working on a new painting. Here is a sneak peak. "The Tiger" by William Blake is one of my favorite poems and for some reason it has been going through my head over and over so I have taken this as cue for my next painting. 

This is the very early stages I've got the main features sketched on the canvas and have begun the under painting. To start I have prepped my canvas with a Gray Gesso. I will complete the under painting with black, white acrylics. Once I'm done with this stage I will add the color with Oil.

This style of painting works for me and I think it is because I spent so much time drawing with pencil. Starting out in shades of black, white and gray and working with shadows to build the contours. In a lot of ways dry brushing the acrylic on to the canvas is not much different than working with a pencil. I have found building a painting up in this fashion adds so much depth to the colors in the final layer.

As you can see from my table I keep lots of reference pictures handy. There are a ton of royalty free websites where you can download reference photos. One of my favorite sites is Morguefile.com . It is a wonderful site for reference material and is very well organized and easy to use.

Well thats all for now got to get away from the computer get some painting done. Let me know what you think.