I don’t always stop painting to post process but just take a quick picture with my phone and move on, causing several steps in one day. I also must admit I do not devote the whole day to the easel – much as I would love to. Instead, I paint a little and go clean my house a little because itis Saturday and the light is as good for dust bunnies as it is for painting. This is the second sitting and I decided to begin to add a little detail to the face. Not only does this start to settle the real size of the flat shapes, but it helps me relax and plan where it needs to go next. Once the afternoon light forces me to stop feeling guilty about the dusting I haven’t finished I will probably do a third session today and will post progress. I hope you’re having fun watching.

The composition was feeling pretty off so I thought I would look at what I could do to unite the two islands of warmth, the face and the hands. I decided that what I needed to do is pull them together with angles and geography – meaning make the figure hunch over a little closer to pull the pieces closer. This also meant I needed to work on the scale or proportional relationship between the two. I am actually oversize now on the hands but that’s what ‘working’ on a painting is all about.

This phase is scarey because it is a matter of pushing back the recessed and dark areas. With a painting that is set in the dark, that pretty much is all of it. These step photos may be boring but I want to see how it changes and these process pictures will be interesting for me too. It’s documentation. It’s a bit daunting to say the least.

Planning the layout for a canvas is one of the most important elements of what makes a painting work and starting a painting without a fair idea, a road-map of sorts, is a huge gamble. Most great artists do a series of preliminary drawings before ever touching paint. I have rarely done that and it is sometimes what makes my work fail during process, I suppose.
I do paint continually in my head and often have a fair notion of what I intend to do but I re-evaluate and adjust as I go. Most paintings start with a photograph (no guarantee of good layout) and the final look may drift far from where it started. Hard telling where this layout will need to go with so few elements to use.

The painting I started is of my husband, Ray, and there is no doubt that by the time I have completed it, I will have faced my lighting challenge. I know what I want to do but don’t know how to get there so this will be a tough one.
IF you are inclined to watch problem solving on canvas at its most agonizingly transparent, check back and feel free to offer comments from the peanut gallery.
Wheeee!

I have started a new painting this week.
Once again, I am going to try and stretch my comfort area by attempting something I want to achieve – NEED to solve – capturing the warmth of human flesh by firelight, within the chill of late night. It sounds easy in one respect since portraits are something I enjoy. But I have a challenge with firelight.
You see, earlier in the year I started another painting of a friend in candlelight. I wasn’t sure how to work out the lighting and I got stuck. Somehow I strayed from the spark of what makes a painting flow forward. That can happen. Life can interrupt, stresses can keep me from the easel, schedules can bump my ability to get back to it, and eventually I find my self stuck. I want to take this painting off the back burner and get back to it so I began another firelight image to help me learn how to do this.

The painting is complete, with light dappling the grasses and trees as the clouds recede and allow the sun to touch the outermost leaves.
You can see the finished painting in the Portfolio under Sale Gallery.
I will also open the process page soon with all of these stage pictures.

Today, I have continued to add detail to the savanna and adding leaves to the scrub trees that pop up in grassy and marshy places. This landscape is slightly different from what I have painted before, using a scale that is reminiscent of the early luminests, although in a very small scale.
When a painting gets this far it needs to sit and be studied. Every time I look at it I see a little something that is not right, something that needs a slight color adjustment, or something I wish I had done differently. I can’t and won’t change everything. I will just reach a point when I call it done and move on so I can begin the next canvas.

It had been a week since I had the opportunity to work on this piece but Saturday I found myself at a retreat with friends that included food, conversation, games and working on projects of choice…a great time to relax. For me, painting is one of my most relaxing endeavors.
It should be noted that taking these process paintings with my phone while in different locations and in different lighting, makes for an inconsistent string of shots. The actual coloring of the painting is between the bluish and the grey tone.