After my paper is on the board there is just one more step before I get to start applying paint: cut a frisket mask.  The frisket covers several areas of the painting and repels water, keeping them white while I work on the rest of the scene.  For this painting, I’ve masked a rectangular section of the ceiling, the windows on the left and right and the girl.  Frisket masks have become a really important part of my work.  To get even areas of color, like the floor in this painting, I get the paper very wet and apply several layers of paint.  Without masks, it would be nearly impossible to keep the red from the floor from seeping into the girl, for example. With the mask I don’t have that problem, and when I’m finished painting the areas surrounding the girl, I can remove it and paint her.

In this picture you can see the masked areas, and my first layers of paint.  I start with light washes and block in major areas of color.  From there, it’s a process of slowly building up color until I reach the right value and hue that I want.  I constantly refer back to my original sketch to check how dark or light I intended to make an area.  I don’t finish one area, then move to the next, but instead do a little here a little there so that the all areas of the scene progress evenly.  The exception, of course is the masked areas, which I generally leave until near the end to paint.  Stay tuned, I’ll discuss more of that in the next post.