Speaking of Art Blog

Waiting Out the Rain, pastel, 11.5x11.5"

I am one of those people who likes to research everything, learning more about my subject at hand, be it a vacation I’m planning, a new recipe I want to try, or a new painting I plan to undertake.  For me, more knowledge is better than less.  So before I start a new painting, I first draw a charcoal thumbnail sketch.  Here is my reference photo alongside my thumbnail.

In the process of drawing a thumbnail, I not only get a feel for the placement and relative sizes of the major shapes, but I also mess around with the overall design of the piece.  Color can be a distraction and, truth be told, it’s just the fluff on top.  So by creating a condensed colorless version of my reference photo, I can more easily analyze whether the bone structure of the work will hang together.  Once I finish my thumbnail, I keep it right next to my easel (along with my reference photo) as I work.  It is my new road map.

Here are some observations and changes I made while I was painting:

• There is really no middle ground to speak of in my reference photo, so I created some by sharpening up edges of some of the background leaves.  That pulled them forward a bit. 
• I accentuated the lilt in the curving leaves in the middle ground.  That served to break up the very centralized location of the butterfly with their diagonal push-pull effect.
• Since my story is about a butterfly waiting out the rain, I wanted more than one single raindrop in the painting.  So I punched the suggestion of raindrops on some of the middle ground leaves and I even threw in a few extra raindrops here and there, but I purposely kept them blurry.
• There are some very distracting blurry shapes in the background in my reference photo.  I eliminated them altogether and simply filled in those spots with color back there.  My eyes needed some places to rest somewhere anyway.
• I moved that triangular shaped bottom edge foreground leaf over to the right a bit.  It was too front and center.  That was a conscious decision I already made in my thumbnail sketch.
• I punched the light/dark patterned details in the butterfly (because I LOVE them) and I darkened up the main leaf the butterfly is hanging from.  It is too washed out in the reference photo.

Moment of truth: After I finished the painting, I took a good quality photo of it and then I sat at my computer and compared side by side images of the reference photo and my painting, both with the color removed.  So I was back to where I started, with the distracting color fluff gone.  How does it measure up?  Very well, methinks.  Then it was time to sign it and think about framing it.  Analyze before, analyze during, and then analyze after.  For me, that is the ticket to creating a successful painting.