Keeping transparency in painting -- how?

[Richard Budig]

How do you go about keeping that sense of depth that one gets when keeping paint transparent?

I'm not so fortunate that I can hit my value/color dead-bang every time, so, as my painting proceeds, I find that I am constantly readjusting value/color relationships, which means that soon enough, I'm adding opaque colors to bring a value or color up, down, etc.

A painting without that sense of depth seems to lack something.

One idea I've considered it to paint my painting, and then, go back and put a glaze over it. If the painting is basically warm, a warm glaze would give that sense of luminosity, but then, the whole thing would be luminous -- right?

Part of the charm of a painting (it seems to me) is one that has those patches of deep, look-forever-into-it, and those patches of opaque places, especially in the lights.

I seem to be rambling, and I apologize. I'd like to hear from anyone who has found a way to achieve this mix of transparency and opaqueness.

[Linda Brandon]

Richard,

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here, but here are a few more ramblings on the subject.

Cools recede; warms advance. Thinly painted, transparent colors recede; thickly painted, opaque colors advance. Textured paint also advances. Soft edges recede; sharp edges advance.

Successive layers of transparent color create a luminosity in skin. This is a good reason to investigate the use of mediums, by the way. This transparency creates a different effect from the luminosity created by alla prima painting, which relies more on color temperature shifts and edge control to advance and recede forms.

Overlapping forms gives the illusion of depth.

Desaturating, greying and lightening colors in background forms gives the illusion of distance and atmospheric perspective. Saturated, intense colors advance the form.

There are a lot more of these maxims and I hope other artists will add to them in this post.

[Holly Snyder]

Linda,

Even though I knew all those things, it's easy for me to lose sight of them sometimes. I found myself thinking of my current painting while reading your post and realizing that I need to change this and that. A warm thanks for the reinforcement.

[Richard Budig]

Sorry if I was too vague. The problem is (for me, at least) that I start out thinking I'll keep this area or that passage transparent because I want that section to look as though you're looking into the distance -- so to speak. However, as I work here and there on my painting, which included adjusting values, it's not uncommon for these transparent passages to begin to take on a more opaque quality, and thus, lose the sense of depth. The thought occurs to me that one could regain some of that depth, or transparency by painting the picture with not too much worry about transparency, and then, at the end, deciding where you'd like to see more of it -- transparency -- and glazing that section. Thanks for the ideas.