Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Painting a Red Mazda on Location

My car needs a tuneup, so I leave it off at the dealership. I make a cup of coffee and sit down at the edge of the showroom.


A red Mazda MX-5 Miata RF is parked in the middle, facing out toward the light. (Link to video on YouTube) Two or three hours? Time enough for a quick painting.


I choose a page in my sketchbook with an insistent yellow casein underpainting. It challenges me to cover every area of the picture with opaque gouache.

This scene has a brighter range of values than most scenes. The light outside is very bright compared to the dark areas on the car. To capture that I have to bleach the lights and make the darks darker than they appear.
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Get your Gear On
Gouache tutorial available at Sellfy and Gumroad.
How to Make a Sketch Easel
Pentalic 5" x 8" Aqua Journal
M. Graham gouache set
Pocket plein air brush set

4 comments:

Alan Anderson said...

It’s just a natural ~ ~ a Gurney, fast cars, art, drawing, design and an admiring on looking crowd! Lol

A Colonel of Truth said...

So good at these paintings, Mister Gurney, it’s as if you’re rolling along on auto pilot. 😎
(Say hello to my friend Walt Bartman at the Yellow Barn.)

Some bird idiot said...

Hello James,

First of all, another great video! It's nice to watch when I can't paint myself.

I have one question: Could you perhaps show more of the paintmixing process you do in videos? I would like to see which consistency of paint you use for certain strokes, and how you mix said colors. I know longer videos don't work too well on YouTube, but a few shots of mixing and wetting paint would be nice.

Thanks in advance.

James Gurney said...

RDA H, I wish I could get deeper coverage on every video, but as you can imagine, my hands are pretty full with the painting alone. I'm trying to shoot some more complete coverage on some paintings for the downloadable video features.