Bonnard - The Dining Room in the Country - step 1

Step 1: the underpainting:
As soon as I started work on the Bonnard I realised immediately what it was that first attracted me to him. It was his emphasis on form and shape. I then realised what it was about my work which was leaving me a bit flat. Bonnard had no fear. Yes, he had a framework of verticals and horizontals but he also had curves and further than that, unusual shapes. Seems that he never forget the big shapes when working on the detail though. I sketched in the main shapes with weak burnt sienna onto a raw sienna underpainting (on white gessoed hardboard). I had decided to work in acrylics as I wasn’t sufficiently confident on doing an accurate job in oils, although I might try that later. It was interesting anyway to see how far the acrylics could go with Bonnard’s vibrant colour.

In this painting (The Dining Room in the Country, 1913) he has used 3 main colour mixes – reds, greens and lavenders. I underpainted the predominantly red areas in their complementary, green, and the green areas in their complementary, red. The lavender table cloth I gave another coat of its complementary, raw sienna mixed with a bit of yellow ochre. By this point a lot of my fear had gone. Working had simply pushed it aside.