I recently tried black and white painting! I’m in love with the result and I documented my painting process to share. I wanted to paint hands because that are a challenge and really fun to paint! I scrolled through Google Images like I usually do looking for references. I decided to paint hands playing a guitar because the way the hands are posed look interesting!
This is the reference image I decided on and I simplified it for better composition. The subject was the hands and I wanted to focus on that. Hands can be difficult to render so I wanted to be prepared before I ever put paint to canvas! I began sketching the hands and guitar. Many erasings later I had a decent sketch!
There was still room for improvement, but I had my basic shapes and light source/shadows. I felt ready to begin my painting. I took a 16×20 canvas that I had previously attempted a self portrait on. It was mostly blue and I wanted to cover it as well as make texture with white acrylic paint. I roughly covered most of the canvas using a palate knife. I love painting with texture because it gives such depth and interest to art! Once the base was completely dry, I took payne’s grey, black, and a little white to roughly sketch my shapes.
It looks like a hand! I had room for improvement on the shapes but it was a good start. I liked the blue undertones of the payne’s grey better than the tube black, so I mostly used it. Occasionally I would mix the pure black in for dark places. I needed to go over the background again as well as start shading the hand!
A little shading goes a long way! Contrast always adds to a painting, which is easy to do in black and white. I let this dry completely before going back in and continuing the shading. I fixed the shape of the hand a little and gave depth to the fingers. In the reference image, the musician has a ring and I wanted to include that but in a simplified way.
I refined the fingers and began adding details. I wanted the guitar neck to be dark like in the picture, but still stand out against the background. The guitar had a long way to go and I was nervous about it. I don’t play guitar or know anything about them! I wanted the chord the musician to be playing to look accurate. It took a lot of trial and error. Lots of measurements and confusion!
I painted the frets before adding the strings on top. I re-did them over and over because the spacing was always wrong. I finally added strings on top and don’t ask me how many times I messed up! Straight lines are not my forte. I added a bit more shading and worked on the sleeve. I finally ended up with this!
The finished product looks a lot different depending on the lighting! The payne’s grey has blue undertones and I loved how it was a bit deeper than plain black/white. This painting looks so different than my usual colorful works but it was so refreshing to do! I will definitely be dabbling in black and white again. I finished this piece just in time for 903 Artisans monthly meeting on February 7th. I brought mine for artist of the month and placed second!
Chanlee Kathleen Long 