Excuse the title of this blog post...my children are Star Wars mad.... Here is a sneak peek of a work in progress, depicting black lace. It is part of a larger painting of about 45x35cm, exploring the textures of black lace. After having painted a few paintings with cream-coloured lace it is a very interesting process to paint black lace. The technique is the same but, as always, values are key. Although I rarely use black paint straight from the tube (I mainly use it for mixing) I have been experimenting with it and found it a tricky paint to use on its own. I have ivory black and recently bought some lamp black which is a slow drying, deep cool black (of course besides ivory and lamp black, there is also mars black which I’ll try and purchase soon). The funny thing with both is that is dries up quite mat, which lightens the value visually. That makes it, for me, a difficult paint to work with as you can only see what you’ve done when it is dry or oiled out/varnished. Of course ...
