Pricing a canvas when nobody taught you how
A painter in Mexico City who sells directly from her studio and a gallerist in Madrid explain how paintings are actually priced, by size, by history and by nerve.
Underpainting, and why your greens look dead
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Show notes
Underpainting, and why your greens look dead
Inés visits a landscape painter in Lisbon who works on a burnt sienna ground and refuses to own a tube of green. They talk through underpainting as a habit, as a shortcut, and as the reason some paintings glow and others sit flat.
- Why a white canvas is the hardest possible starting point
- Mixing greens from blue and yellow, and from black and yellow
- The warm ground showing through, and when to let it
- Tonal underpainting versus coloured underpainting
- A painting rescued by scraping it back and starting again
The pigment list from this conversation is on the show page for anyone who wants to try it.
Transcript
Hola, I am Inés Garrido and this is Wet Paint, Open Window, the show where painters talk about painting the way we do when nobody important is listening. Today I am in Lisbon, in a studio on the fourth floor with no lift and the best north light I have seen in years. The painter who works here has not owned a tube of green paint in a decade, and her landscapes are full of trees. We are going to talk about underpainting, about the burnt sienna ground she starts every canvas on, and about why the greens most of us mix look like they died on the palette. There is also a story about a painting she scraped back to the canvas after three months of work. If you have ever stared at a white canvas and felt sick, this is for you. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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