Gears (underpainting)

Working from a piece of clip art here, for lack of other inspiration, and because machinery was fun last time around. Also trying out masonite instead of canvas; so far I’m liking the fact that there’s no weave texture to deal with (which I was usually trying to gesso the hell out of anyway.)

One thing I’m noticing: since I usually wind up working from photographic sources, I get in trouble where the photo goes all black or blows out all white, especially with contrasty images like this one; that limited brightness range looks strange when translated to paint.

Looking again at this now, I think I may be paying too much attention to the photograph and not enough to the painting; some of the lighting here, while matching the “real thing,” looks fake. (The light on that nut is all over the place.)