SNOWBOARDER: ONE OF FOUR NEW ACRYLIC PAINTINGS

Below is one of four sports orientated paintings just completed for the Picture Of Health Club+Spa, all of which I shall be posting shortly. A brilliant and challenging project (each painting was 36'' by 36'') with a tight turn around (twelve days) that I was delighted to be involved in. I like to take photos at various stages of a project to chart progress, learn from mistakes and enjoy the journey taken to reach the final outcome-which does not always resemble the initial designs! Below are seven stages it took to complete my favourite of the four.

First of all, after wiping down the canvas, painting four coats of gesso (lightly sanding each one before applying the next) and dividing the canvas up into thirds, I sketched the cartoon in pencil. Once I was happy with the proportions and composition I mixed some cobalt blue artist's acrylic with Winsor+Newton flow improver (great for retaining colour when working large areas) and started to drop in the background.

I wanted sharp contours so I repainted the snowboarder's arm white and then masked it off using masking tape. Pale colours tend to recede while dark and vibrant colours advance, so using various mixtures of cobalt blue, ultramarine and black I worked my way up the picture surface adding depth to the sky by using darker shades the the closer I got to the top taking care to make sure the brush strokes were as even as possible.

I then turned my attention to the mid-tones around the snowboarder and in the foreground. These were tints mixed using cobalt blue, ultramarine, cadmium red and white. Here I tried to concentrate on breaking up the white surface with shapes intended to draw the viewer's eye back to the focal point, the snowboarder.

After placing a shadow beneath the snowboard and spattering white and light purple paint to try and create the effect of powdered snow being carved up I started to block in the base tones of the snowboarder before working up to the highlights and down to the shadows, mainly working dark on light. The final addition was the emerald green pattern on the snowboard, done and dusted! Below is the finished painting..