Titanium white

Titanium white, oil on canvas panel, approx. 5x7 in. SOLD

8/9. In case you haven't noticed the pattern, I have been playing with white on white - things that "read" as white and white backgrounds - to see how the white suddenly becomes less so in that situation. The ochers and blues started to jump out and take over as the dominant colors to be found within competing "whites," or it appeared that way to me. The mushrooms perhaps weren't really white enough or like young Waterhouse I rendered too much of the dirt, so that didn't really happen in their case. And this one is just a silly pun.

It started with a quick (bad) pencil sketch, which I haven't been doing except for the awl, and the lines and marks were visible almost to the end. I actually like when I leave a lot of marks as it makes me think of Bruegel. The first time I saw Bruegel in a museum I was horrified by the amount of underdrawing that screamed out through his thin overpainting (it seemed like a complete pen sketch underneath), and impressed by the simmering energy that this produced. Unless he was also lazy, like Degas he had a deliberate carelessness from a degree of confidence that I can only hope to reach. These guys were masters because they drew (in their different ways) and the line was as important as the light.