I am in the throes of working on a new series of paintings based on gangly, gnarly, and craggy trees. It's taken a while to get here, with lots of experimentation. I've started two other series that I still want to pursue at some point, but I feel positive that the trees are what I am meant to work on right now. Oh what a feeling!
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| Reference Photo |
I thought it would be fun to share my process as I make a new painting. I have already shared my "complicated and grueling" process once before for the
New American Paintings blog, so instead of going into the technical stuff here I will be sharing more of the "why."
I have looked at the reference for this painting every day for seventeen years. There are three old crepe myrtle trees in front of our house that I have always loved, but have now taken on a new significance to me. These trees, with their twisting limbs resemble hands and fingers reaching to the sky. This is significant because as an artist, my hands are my lifeline and the thought of losing use of them is a scary prospect.
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| Sketchbook Drawing |
With just about all of my paintings, I work from reference photos. I would love to be able to work directly from the source but I live in Houston. It's hot, there are mosquitoes, and did I mention the heat and mosquitoes? I'm tough in many ways but not that tough! I use the reference photos to do my initial drawing and decide on a composition. Next I have the drawing enlarged and then transfer it
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| Enlarged drawing with "Paint by Numbers" |
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onto my canvas. (There are a number of complicated sub-steps in between which were covered in the
New American Paintings article!) I'm sure that I could simplify the process and make my life easier. What fun would that be though? I did finally stop growing and harvesting the cotton, spinning the yarn, and weaving the fabric into canvas that I stretched on my hand wood-worked frames.
Next time, I will share the final steps of color picking, color mixing, and painting the painting, and why I continued to make things so complicated. Stay tuned...
