matt harvey art
Portrait paintings, art demonstrations, figurative painting, landscapes
Glazing skin tones like Caravaggio
I don’t want to seem like I’m making any grand claims but I hope to show in a new video what for me is something like the process of glazing that Caravaggio used. I’m coming to this based on trial and error. How nice it would be to travel back in time to watch him at work! But from looking carefully at his paintings and having a go myself I think this may be fairly close to it. I thought I had lost the video but it turned up in an imovie folder I made! It looks as rough as it does because of time limitations on the videos I make, but I think you can see how you would proceed and continue to refine the modelling, chroma etc. with a bit more work. Its all on my Patreon page but you can see the first installment on youtube.
The palette for the skin tones is mainly:
Titanium White
Vermillion
Yellow Ochre
And also:
Burnt and Raw Umber
Black – I use Ivory Black and I’m personally not fussed which black you use.
I had a lot of fun doing this copy. Please let me know what you think about it. In hindsight the colours are quite light but I’m just getting used to this process. Also its useful not to commit too much in the beginning and deepen the colours as you go. I will work into them in the next glaze as I did in the Rubens copy.
The point is I feel I have come closer to seeing how Caravaggio achieved his painterly effects, and learned more about his process. I hope I have learned through this example how it is possible to paint using a similar process to Caravaggio.
Happy painting! Matt
matt harvey art 