What's on the Horizon

I've realized as I have posted here that I have gone kind of backwards. My first post was the finished painting and then the process. I have decided to write about the next painting in the opposite order. I will post about the starting process, drawings, steps in paintings and then finally the finished work.

So no image tonight. I'll be getting things organized for you to see, starting tomorrow.

A corner of my studio

I thought you might be interested to see a corner of my studio.
I like to have drawings of paintings I have done and those to come up around me. All the bits and pieces you see are things that inspire me.

The predominent pieces that are represented are Andromeda on the left and Ophelia on the right. I will be putting up more about them in the coming days.

Back to The Three Graces

I have put up this image today to show more about how I work. I start with a brown ground and then transfer the drawing on top.

I work in acrylic. I use glazes to build up the forms. Part of the process also involves removal of paint, using a plastic pot scrubber as an eraser to get the tones I want.

This process of adding and subtracting can be time intensive in order to get exactly the effect I want.

You can also see how much I edited out the plant life in the finished painting (posted below).

Another painting -- Psyche

The inspiration for this painting, Psyche, comes from Greek myth. Psyche was a beautiful princess who incurred the wrath of Aphrodite.
Psyche means soul in Greek and also butterfly.
The initial inspiration for the butterflies in my paintings comes not from that, but funnily enough from a bookI read on Wedgwood.
The potters would place butterflies over flaws made in the firing of an item. These would disguise the imperfections.

In time the meaning of the butterflies has changed for me, in my paintings.

I like the dichotomy of the lightness of the butterflies and the weight of the models. And how it plays with your mind, in the sense that your values slip between the two. They also create the sense of space that the model occupies and also pin them to the composition.

Drawing That Shows How I Work

Here is a close up of The Three Graces drawing. What I like about this is that it shows better the areas where I have laid over or changed out parts.

Some parts required multiple edits. My wife, who is also an artist, helped me at times with what we called "copy editing". She would make suggestions on areas of masking tape. If I thought it would work, I would use it. The beauty of the system is the ease with which changes can be made.

Sometimes, when you are composing an image, the problem is not drawing something more "correctly" but working on the composition and how the parts relate to each other so the parts work together as a whole.

This is the drawing of the first draft I did for the work of The Three Graces. If you look carefully you will be able to see some of the changes I made in the course of the actually painting it.
It is a full saize version of the work. In coming days I shall post some of my other paintings and thier working drawings. I find that while I like to make smaller sketches to get a general idea, I like a full scale version in order to really work out all the issues with proportion, placement and planning.
Though this isn't a great photograph, you can also see something of the way I work. I use tracing paper for the drawing and tape in parts that I change. I find it tolerates multiple erasures better and since I also use masking tape for "trial runs" or parts that I am working on changes, the tracing paper is better than any other paper stock I have used.

Close Up View of the Three Graces (Lower right)

This section of the painting "The Three Graces", shows the ripples created by the movement of the waterlily. In my work I like to play with contrasting ideas -- stillness and movement, heaviness and lightness, light and dark, captivity and freedom.

The start of something.

This is the first post of my new blog. In this blog I plan to share my paintings.
The above painting is my latest painting called "The Three Graces".
In real life it is 56 x 52 inches, acrylic on canvas.

The purpose of my work is to take some classical imagery and recast it with women who look more like the real everyday women whom I know and love.

All of the women in my paintings are amalgams of women I know or have seen. You might recognize an arm or an eye or a belly, but each of the characters of my paintings are my creations.

Over the next few days I will be adding more of my work. I hope you'll leave me a comment and tell me what you think. Please come back soon to see the rest.