A new painting! There are numerous steps to prepare for a new painting.
1. Concept --- what captures my attention? What do I find interesting, beautiful, intriguing? What speaks to me and causes me to want to interpret it, explore it, and use it as a vehicle to learn and speak of something?
2. Arrangement & Editing - how will I best arrange the elements to make visual sense? Will I remove certain things, reposition certain things, simplify? How can the arrangement of the components draw the eye of the viewer into the painting?
3. Evaluation - What values are shown? Are these realistic values and how can I make notations so that when I mix my paint I have the proper values. (You can probably see some of my notations in the top thumbnail and value study)
4. Create an underpainting - lay in thin washes of neutral colors to establish the composition and values.
This is what you see in the lower image - which is a partial underpainting before I ran out of time this evening.
Next steps will be
1. Finish the underpainting
2. Establish the color harmony that I want to use.
3. Mix paint for for proper color temperatures, mixtures, and values
4. Begin to paint in thin layers, building up my painting.
Of course, throughout all this process I will be evaluating as I go to be sure I'm on target.
This landscape will be 9x12" when finished and just in the first 4 steps at the top, a good amount of work and time has already been invested. As the artist, I only have an idea of where this is going to end up - some of it will be determined along the way as the painting begins to speak to me!
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