Marbles

I'm working on a series of small marble paintings. I'm fascinated with marbles and love staring at the differences in the surface and interior. These paintings are almost abstract to me, they're kind of an iconic circle or sphere shape against a stark background.

This is the beginning of a green marble.

This is how I start a lot of my paintings, very loose and just establishing values. For this painting I decided to do a true grisaille underpainting, and really worked up the details on the marble using just gray and white. I used raw umber and ultramarine blue for the gray.

I didn't take a picture of the finished underpainting, but here is how it looks after one glaze of color:

I normally paint more directly, only adding some glazing at the end, so this is a really different method for me. I'm not sure if I like painting this way or not. I will try to keep taking photos of this one to show it's progress.