Tracey Costescu Fine Art

End of Autumn - Graphite Pencil on Paper $350 - Matted & Framed After a long hiatus, I have started exhibiting again and I am happy to say that my piece, End of Autumn, was accepted in the juried show LIMITLESS the FCA's online exhibition and competition. You can view the exhibition online in full at: http://artists.ca/show/limitless/0  there are some amazing pieces in the exhibit and it is a very diverse show.

Grisaille - Oil on Panel - 8x10"  This is the first oil pass of the grisaille for a piece I am working on.  The original drawing can be viewed at http://tcostescu.blogspot.ca/2014/07/shell-leaf-pitcher-study-graphite-on.html   For this painting I transferred the drawing onto the panel using an oil transfer (I will blog about how to do this in the near future). Once the transfer was dry, I did a light burnt umber layer to workout the main values, unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of this step. Next time ;) When the burnt umber layer was completely dry, I used my pre-mixed oil paints from a value of 2 to 9 (2 darkest value, 9 near white value)  At this stage I focused on trying to really correctly record the tilts and angles of my subjects from my still life set up.  Working from life is more challenging than working from a photo but so much more fulfilling as there is just so much more information about the form to work from. The paint is app...

Quick Oil Sketches on Paper For these sketches I was experimenting with different surfaces to paint on for my practice sketches & color studies.  The painting on the far left was done drawn first with charcoal and then painted using a monochromatic values on Arches Oil Paper, the painting in the middle was done with a quick burnt umber sketch with the brush directly on the paper and then overpainted with the monochromatic values (a copy of a painting by John Singer Sargent that does not really look like the original but I loved her look so kept her as is :)) done on gessoed Arches watercolor paper and the painting on the right was painted in the same manner as the Sargent copy but on canvas paper.  My favorite surface by far was the gessoed Arches watercolor paper, although the Arches Oil paper was a close second and I think with a coat of gesso it would be my fav...other than price.  The canvas paper was my least favorite as it is very slipp...