Enfilade

To paint is to enter an infinite series of rooms, one opening upon another, on and on and on. An enfilade.

I love that word and the concept. I think of foreign period movies, where the Czar's mistress wanders down room after room, long skirts rustling, in and out of the sunlight streaming through tall windows and gleaming on gold leaf ornament. Farther and farther, the sound of her skirts becoming just a whisper until she is a mere dot in the infinity of doors and rooms.

This watercolor is about a more intimate space. Infinity tamed to three rooms and domesticated by a cat playing with a ball of yarn in the dining room. Vaguely Scandinavian. I think of the quietly profound paintings of Hammershoi.

I've been thinking of how to show students the effects of underglazing with granulated pigments as an over glaze. I used auroelin yellow as a wash over all the drawing, painted in the shapes, either wet or dry, depending on the effects of distance I wanted, then sprayed it lightly with a dulling fixative (to keep the colors from lifting).

Then, with a large soft brush, I applied a wash of cobalt blue with a little burnt umber and Daniel Smith Lunar black to the areas I wanted in the shadows. The granulation creates a penumbra (another word I like) ...a partial obscuring of the objects, so the colors, especially the warm colors, glow faintly in the shadows.

Note that I painted the cat first with a rusty orange, then painted with with the shadow mixture just to the edge so it's form is outlined with orange. Backlight.

©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/17/09 All blog entries on this site, visual or intellectual, are the property of Jennifer M. Carrasco (unless stated otherwise) and cannot be reproduced or used without her written permission.