Prepping for Fractured WC class

I am doing another sample for the class and refreshing myself at the same time.

This is a 16 x 20 canvas (although most of the class will use 12 x 12 gallery wrapped. I have so many in the class that I don't want to use any more of that size for demos.

After prepping the canvas I chose my palette...usually 3 colors that give me a good range of mixing.

In this case Quin Magenta, Indian Yellow and Antwerp blue. I primed the canvas with those colors in VERY pale shades. And then sprayed the canvas lightly with water while it was still wet for some texture. Then I let it get bone dry.

I know it's impossible to see in the photo but I drew a 3" mat/frame around the canvas with pencil and then I copied my pre-drawn subject matter onto the canvas using graphite paper. I like to paint a good part of the subject matter BEFORE I fracture it. Everything will lift off canvas so I can remove or add as I need to.

These are 3 rosy glass candleholders surrounded with pines and holly berries.

There will be a secondary subject with candles more to the right and I plan to add some musical notes and the word "Noel" somewhere after I see how the composition develops. Obviously a Christmas theme!

I try to mix all my colors from those three colors I chose.

You may not recognize this as the painting develops. It's WAY fun.

Note: when I took out my studio wc palette (which I haven't used in AGES)..some of the wc have turned to stone (hahaha). Blah. So there was a good hour to clean up the palette and refresh and paints!!!