I am on the verge of finishing a new painting and thought I would share the process with you. Here is the almost finished work above in my studio. I thought it was finished at one point, but after giving it a few days, I see a number of things that don't quite jive with me. These are a few things that seem out of place such as areas of color, tone and balance of light and dark areas. I will post the finished piece when it is done so that you may compare the two.
Here is where it all started, with this little sketch idea I did a few years ago in the kitchen. There are a number of paintings that I want to do that illustrate different lines of communication which take place during our interaction with one another. These are unspoken forms of dialogue such as body language and the exchange of energy information or what I would term the 'higher self dialogues'.
This drawing done last year is an interpretation of the first drawing, done not necessarily as a preliminary for a painting but just as a drawing. But it was after this that I really wanted to do a painting with this image.
I had a board that I had already primed that I thought would be a good size fro this painting and as it was sitting on my easel, I saw an interpretation of one of the figures in the brushwork of my gessoed ground. I was now torn between this new perspective or to keep to my original drawing layout. I decided to do some small sketches with this new figure and various combinations of placements to help me decide. It was not an easy decision.
You can see here that I decided upon the new perspective. I thought that there was a reason why this figure showed up, so why fight with it and I knew that I could always go and paint another picture with the original drawing. So, with brush and paint, I sketched out the figure I saw in the gesso. You can see it on the left. Then after sketching out the other figure, on the right, I started to paint with color.
