Looking for help with checks - no kidding!

[Karin Wells]

This is my only painting that I could find that had blue checks on it.

Painting this is a piece of cake. Completely paint the white cloth that is underneath the pattern complete with shadows, halftones and highlights.

When it is dry, mix a glaze of blue paint (I like ultramarine) and paint stripes going either horizontally or vertically (not both) over all (highlight, halftone and shadow). Be sure to respect the way the cloth moves and folds.

When this is dry, mix the same color and intensity of glaze and paint stripes in the opposite direction. Where the two stripes overlap, the square will be darker.

When this is dry, match the glazed blue color with a mixture of white and blue to exactly match what is underneath and repaint over (only) those squares (both dark and light blue) that appear in the highlighted portions of the shirt.

Because you can see through a glaze, it will be lighter and brighter in the light and show less contrast (or maybe not visible at all) in the shadows.

Viola, you're done! After this, I'll bet you ask your client to wear "easy to paint" clothes.

[Terri Ficenec]

Originally Posted by Karin Wells

When this is dry, match the glazed blue color with a mixture of white and blue to exactly match what is underneath and repaint over (only) those squares (both dark and light blue) that appear in the highlighted portions of the shirt.

Because you can see through a glaze, it will be lighter and brighter in the light and show less contrast (or maybe not visible at all) in the shadows.

Hi Karin -

Well, don't you make it look effortless!

I understand the part about glazing the sets of stripes one way, then the other... just not sure that I'm following the part about matching the glazed blue color with a mixture of blue and white to match what is underneath for the highlighted portions. Is the intent of this step to make the highlighted areas more opaque? (So that I'd be exactly matching the color of each highlighted square (or part square) as it's painted?) Or am I completely misunderstanding?

Thanks so much for the advice!

[Karin Wells]

Is the intent of this step to make the highlighted areas more opaque?

Yes. Light is always portrayed in thicker opaque paint. Shadows are thin.

(So that I'd be exactly matching the color of each highlighted square (or part square) as it's painted?)

Yes. Because you can see through the glaze to the cloth below, it allows you to see the exact color and value you need so you don't have to guess.

I used a small flat square tipped sable brush to get the glaze stripes uniform. If you make the stripes slightly bigger, you won't have to paint so many of them.

It was a while ago that I painted this still life, but I remember that the entire checkered pattern probably took a total of 30 minutes of my time. The pattern only looks hard - but it really isn't. Painting the plain white cloth underneath was much more time consuming.

Sorry this is such a poor photo detail. I rescanned my crummy snapshot to show more detail. This is one of those paintings that I didn't bother to photograph adequately before I sold it. I regret that now.

[SB Wang]

ABC news:

Karin---is promoted as CEO of
K-Mart Corporation (only on the condition of that she paints each piece of cloth by hand).

A CEO position, is "a piece of cake". Because she handles check affair well, she is invited to be the president of the Republic of Czech, the second American citizen ever been considered after Einstein.

One of my friends, Mr.Ma, feels good to see his designed clothes at Wal-Mart, day job; he also exhibited his Chinese paintings at galleries, moonlighting.

[Terri Ficenec]

Karin - Thanks so much!

That's really helpful!

I really want to give this a try since it was the boy's favorite shirt. I'm going to try keeping the base light blue and the check pattern darker blue fairly close in value so that the pattern will (hopefully) stay relatively quiet, and not turn into a distraction. If it doesn't turn out, I've already got an OK to paint the shirt a solid light blue... so I'll just paint it over if need be.

[Michele Rushworth]

Let us know how it goes!

[Richard Budig]

Terri:

Sorry I can't help with your check problem other than to say that if I'm forced to include a garment with a difficult pattern, I'll either "indicate" it, or or leave it alone and paint the basic background of the garment.

I really like that photo you included. Did you take it? Indoor film or outdoor? Did you use artificial light or outside light coming in from the window.

[Terri Ficenec]

Originally Posted by Richard Budig

Terri:
I really like that photo you included. Did you take it? Indoor film or outdoor? Did you use artificial light or outside light coming in from the window.

Hi Richard,

Well thanks! I'm still trying to get the whole photography thing right. The one thing that bothered me about this photo was the glare on his glasses, I've got other photos of him without them, so I'm fudging that right eye a bit. This was taken with a Digital camera (Canon Digital Rebel) and is using only the natural light from the windows in the room. I don't honestly remember what settings were on the camera, but I would assume I set a custom white balance first (using the light in that spot) so that the colors would be as true as possible. I've got this painting started but haven't gotten into the check pattern yet, just posted it in Work in Progress .