Cross Pein Hammer | Oil Painting by John Morfis

Cross Pein Hammer Origins

When I was a child I spent a fair amount of time tooling around in the garage, no pun intended.  Towards the front end of his overcrowded tool bench my male parent had this one-time steel boiling pot.  It was ane of those behemothic pots yous would boil food in, like 3 pounds of pasta for instance.  In this pot he kept all of his hammers.  I would have out a hammer and use it for some random woods project and return information technology.  I always saw this strange looking hammer in the pot and wasn't sure what it was for or fifty-fifty what information technology was called.

In one case I got into painting tools, my male parent's hammer stash was i of the commencement places I looked for nevertheless life items to turn into oil paintings.  I finally decided to paint this weird hammer.  While I'm still not sure of it's exact purpose I have come to find out that information technology is a cross pein hammer thanks to the internet of things.

Color Temperature

It turns out that this was one of my favorite hammers to paint and then far.  I really like the fashion the wooden handle came out.  I used many layers of raw umber, vandyke brown, burnt sienna, and yellow ocher to become the job done.  All of the wood grain appears to exist difficult to pigment but I made sure I began with a precise drawing from which I transferred and worked on elevation of.  Upon close examination I realized that the slight shine of the tool's wooden handle gave  a subtle highlight right nigh the center of the handle and traveled upwards through almost of the shaft.I noticed that this highlight was libation in hue as compared to the warmth of the surrounding wood grain.

In my younger days I probably would accept reached for a tube of blueish paint and most likely would have overdid the whole event.  Nowadays I take much more restraint and have realized that the primal to realism is subtlety.  Only using a neutral gray next to all the warmer hues is plenty to make the highlight seem cooler. This mode of thinking and methodology of pigment mixing has actually go an important function of my painting process.  I keep a few neutral grays on my palette and I reach for those first when attempting to achieve subtle temperature changes within my artwork.  If necessary I can ever warm or cool the gray with an additional color.  I am, yet always surprised at how fiddling I need to modify the pure grays when used in an actual painting!  They may look useless on the palette but come to life when used next to colors in an actual painting.

I was taught by most art teachers not u.s. use black when painting.  I adhered to that featherbrained rule for about of my painting career simply now I employ blackness and several grays in my paintings and have never looked dorsum.  At least non without regret.  The grays I currently utilize are portland grayness medium and portland gray low-cal past Gamblin.