New Painting

Hello, from a blustery day in Sydney.

I do have paintings to continue working on, and it is hard to dive right into them after being away so long with recent business travel. I kept looking at the Lion #2 and wanting to work on him, but just kept looking at him instead. Some of you may recognize these paintings-in-progress from previous posts. I suppose this weekend and next it will be time to finish them. And I will do exactly that. As for the Lion # 2, I will work on him NEXT, but knew I needed to first break the ice with something else.

So today I started something new.

I have been wanting to do another floral composition. I have a few references that I have been thinking about. One with yellow roses that I am editing in Adobe Elements (as I learn to use that application). Another is very pink peonies and flowers in a white urn. I have wanted to do that one for awhile, so it won.

I sketched the main aspects of the composition in willow charcoal onto a canvas that I am recycling. This means the canvas had another painting on it that I decided I did not like too much, so I painted over it with Titanium White to make it a blank canvas again. The painting I painted over had some texture in it, so this new painting will have texture too, because its ground is not perfectly pristinely flat. That is ok with me, as I may use impasto medium in some of the flowers, or in the texture of the urn vase they sit in.

Here is a picture of the first underpainting. LOTS more to do on this, but today was about: 1) Getting the painting flow going again. 2) Getting the basic bones of the composition in place. 3) And having some navigation reference points to work from to develop it further.

The photo here shows the scale of the canvas compared to other objects, as you have Winston at right, offering himself as a comparative scale reference ! He seems very happy I am painting again (he loves watching me paint). This all makes me feel very much to be back "home."