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Marcus Sprigens

Joined Artfinder: Aug. 2016

Artworks for sale: 27

(1)

United Kingdom

Updates from Marcus Sprigens's studio

  • Painting Unquellable Elga

    Starting with a burnt umber background, I lay down the foundation for the oil painting. The burnt umber provides a warm, earthy base. Primarily, I focus on creating the initial structure of the face using white highlights in layers, a technique known as grisaille. With each layer, I carefully build up the form and contours, ensuring that the portrait takes shape gradually. Once the grisaille underpainting is established, I transition to adding color. Mixing small amounts of paint with linseed oil, to apply thin glazes in a circular motion, starting with yellows to introduce warmth to the skin tones. Gradually incorporateing reds for a natural flush and browns to deepen shadows and add richness. Throughout the process, I pay close attention to blending and refining the colors to achieve smooth transitions and subtle variations in skin tone. Each stroke is deliberate as I work to capture the essence of the subject matter. As I near completion, I focus on detailing and adding finishing touches to the portrait. I refine features such as the eyes, lips, and hair, adding highlights and shadows to enhance depth and realism. In the end, the result is a portrait brought to life through careful observation and execution.

    02 March 2024

    Painting a face in grisaille and colouring

    Starting with burnt umber background, this oil painting receives white highlights painted in layers until the semblance of a face is built in grisaille. Then colouring with small amounts of paint, blended in a circular motion on the piece, enriched with tones of yellow, then red, followed by brown.

    02 March 2024

    Painting Griselda

    Griselda's portrait is inspired by Dutch and Italian Renaissance paintings. Her features, delicately rendered in oils, portray a certain mystique. The initial strokes in titanium white carefully establishing the focal points with highlights. Primarily, a balanced array of tonal values is set through the application of grisaille, paving the way for the infusion of colour. Transparent glazes, combined with linseed oil, contribute to the gradual buildup of subtle tonal variations with each layer. The process involves starting with lighter glazes of yellow, orange, and red transparent oxide, progressing to shadow tones characterised by burnt umber and ultramarine blue. Each glaze is granted one or two days to dry before the imposition of the next tone.

    02 March 2024
    Principles of Mischtechnik Painting and Alchemical Art Workshop, East Sussex, 2016

    Principles of Mischtechnik Painting and Alchemical Art Workshop, East Sussex, 2016

    This photo was taken at a workshop held by fellow artist Daniel Mirante. In the two paintings viewable, the mid tone colours, red and a raw umber, are applied over black Indian ink outlines (cartoon or imprimiatura) that mark the darkest areas. Shadows are further applied with burnt umber glazes, a mix of paint, purified linseed oil and spike lavender. White egg tempera hatching and lead white applications bring the lighter tones and highlights creating an image in Optical Grisaille, an indirect painting technique practiced during the Renaissance. This procedure creates tonal values with different layers of translucent paint, one over the other, as they dry. The upper layers modify, but do not altogether conceal the lower layers. This differs from the opaque tones of a painting created using the "Alla Prima" technique, where layers of wet paint are mixed to give the colour.

    11 September 2016