#imprimatura

Purple underpainting (imprimatura) of a birch tree with the first layer of paint applied~

I don't know what I'm doing here. Some color theory, but I mostly painted this without thinking about it. Purple (violet) is a complement to yellow. I added a small amount of purple paint to the white snow (so it's not pure white). Ultramarine Violet was used for the purple. A small amount of Cadmium Yellow added to lots of Titanium White was used to paint the pale yellow background.

This is based on one of the birch trees near my home. This painting isn't finished, but I kinda like it as it is right now. With art it's really hard to know when to stop and when to keep pushing to see if the painting can be improved or developed better. Sometimes you risk making a decent painting worse, you know?

what did you think your ask was gonna accomplish? other than discourage me, i mean. did you think complaining about this would make me want to publish the third chapter?

if you'd asked this five days ago, i would've said yes.

i’ve written seven drafts for the last chapter of imprimatura, all of them spanning across several months since last october. and i've hated every single one of them to the point that it killed whatever passion i had for writing.

it's funny, because the “other stuff” i’ve been posting recently was helping renew my passion for writing! so much that i started working on imprimatura again last week.

for the past few months i genuinely thought nobody wanted to read it anymore. and honestly? i'm kinda glad you sent this ask, because now i know for a fact i can let this go.

if you're disappointed, do me a favor and block me. you're not entitled to my work, and i'd rather not have people like you sticking around.

This is a blue underpainting (imprimatura) for an impressionist/expressionist oil painting of some birch trees and foot steps.

This is a purple underpainting (imprimatura) for an oil painting of a birch tree against a stylized background~

The blurriness around the edges is not the camera being out of focus, but part of the effect of the painting. I'm trying to figure out how to get the branches to "melt" into the light. The purple was made with Ultramarine Violet.

Birch trees are probably my favorite tree to draw and paint, at least right now. Birch is everywhere in Alaska, so I have plenty of sources of inspiration whenever I need a birch tree to study.