Process: The Painting That Took A Year

Once I start a painting I usually have no problem with it, the paint flows and it almost seems to finish itself. I finished "God Bless This House," the subject of this post, in January, and I was very very happy to be done. For some reason, it took me forever.... a year.

PROCESS - God Bless This House:

Process: Rough thumbnail sketches. I went with a version of the 2nd.

Process: This drawing was the final stage of planning.

Process: stopping point

When I got to this point in the painting, I painted over the figures and stopped for 5 months. I had never done this before, but something (I couldn't have told you what) was wrong with the painting.

Process: Whiteout

When I finally tried to tackle the painting again and save it, this is what I came up with.

And I ran with it.

Process: final

Detail

Back to the Basics

The past couple of months have found me working hard on getting new paintings together for my upcoming show at Hillyer Art Space in March. And I have been working hard: sketching, planing, prepping canvases and have a bunch of paintings underway.

On Sunday I decided that I needed a break from my intense routine and started working on some new rough sketches for the next batch of paintings I want to finish for the show. I've been drawing and drawing and drawing (or trying to draw) for the past couple of days, but things aren't coming out the way I would like. So last night I decided I needed to clear my head and go back to the basics and draw from life.

I did a quick self portrait and started to feel good, like I was relearning how to see. It isn't perfect (the eyes are a bit off due to slight shifts in the pose and I didn't pay that much attention to my hair and beard), but I feel like its a good start. I'm hoping to do a few more
of these before I dive back into the routine!

New Illustration

The following illustration was done for Education Week and accompanied an article demonstrating the failings of the "What works Clearinghouse" (WWC), an initiative of the Institute for Education Sciences and designed to "help the education community locate and recognize reliable evidence to make informed decisions," and to "provide educators with a central and trusted source of scientific evidence of what works in education." Whew!

rough sketch

final drawing ( i scrapped the original layout and, at the directions of the art director, made it less "cartoony")

Final illustration colored in Photoshop

PREVIEW DRAWINGS

Since I really don't have anything new to say this week, I thought I'd give you a peek at what I'm working on these days. Doing a bunch of sketching and here are a couple of line drawings I think will make it on to canvas soon!

BEHIND THE SCENES:

So I thought I’d share another example of my work process. Here’s a quick run down:

- I start by brainstorming, usually starting with some theme or idea inspired by anything really, the news, music, a friend’s story, or my story. I might take notes of specific details or color schemes I don’t want to forget and then…
- I do a bunch of really rough thumbnail sketches where I begin working out the composition and then..
- I do a detailed line drawing that I will use as a reference while I paint.

thumbnail vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvreference drawing

final painting