The Life of a Painting
I usually work from photographs I've taken from my travels. When I set out to do a painting, my first step is find and settle on a photograph. I try to select one with an interesting composition and vibrant colors. I also like to work with images that capture the character of a place.
For this painting, I chose this photo taken on a country road in Quebec Provence, Canada. I remember the day we were on that road, enjoying the sun and clean air, when we came across this field of sunflowers. I had to hit the breaks and jump out of the car to take pictures of the scene. It wasn't until later that I realized how much this photo captures about the tranquility of this area, as well as the hard work of the people through the well-maintained farm buildings. I changed the electric pole to a patrimonial cross, which are found all over the country side, to show the cultural devotion to family and religion.
STEP 1: Once I've decided on a photo, and picked the size canvas I want to use, the first step is to roughly and basically draw out the composition. I use a light colored paint to draw in the basic shapes and elements of the picture. I keep this loose - it will change as I go - and add more lines to adjust things until I have a composition I like. Note also that I take some liberties with the drawing to get the composition and proportions the way I like them, so the painting will never exactly match the photo.
STEP 2: Next is the color blocking phase. My goal in color blocking is to completely cover the canvas with a thin, smooth layer of paint. I often adjust the drawing a bit through this phase as well. Because I prefer to work wet-on-wet, I use base colors that are similar to what I'll ultimately be layering on top, but I do not take the time or worry about matching the colors exactly. Often I will use left over colors on my palette, from a previous painting, to do the color blocking.
STEP 3: Working from the background to the foreground, or top to bottom, I begin layering colors into the painting, building up the paint thicker and thicker, in short brush strokes. I vary my strokes based on the texture of the object I am painting, such as short up-sweeping curves in the sky and quick dabs for leaves and flowers.
When working with trees, be sure to include sky holes to make the tree look realistic. Note that the color of the sky, seen through the tree, usually looks a little darker than the sky surrounding the tree.
In some circumstances, such as these sunflowers, I make the application of paint particularly heavy. This helps capture the texture of the scene.
As a last step, I had final details such as small shadows, and the strips across the tops of these grain silos.
SCRAPING AND FIXING: Inevitably at some point in the painting, after I've been building up paint, there will be something I'll want to change, a part of the drawing I'll want to tweak. When this happens, I use a palette knife to scrape down the paint in that section, fix the drawing, and then start over applying and building up the paint.
In this example, I decided the moment where the blue and pink house meet was too centered in the painting, that the blue house needed to be wider and the pink house narrower. I scraped down the paint of the pink house and built up the blue house.
