I have made several attempts recently to take pictures of my progress on my paintings, only to find myself so sucked into the painting (“in the zone” as I call it) that I would forget and would not remember until I was done. But I was determined to achieve this goal and so tried over and over only to find I had only one or two pictures of my progress.
But finally I have done it! I now have SIX pictures of the progress of one of my last paintings. Lets start with the line drawing!
I had originally had her be a maple tree Dryad but the more I thought about it the more I didn’t like the idea. I wanted a late summer feeling and thought berries.
I used Masking fluid to seal the leaves from getting blue on them and started painting the background.
I forgot to take pictures for a bit and so up to this point I painted in the branches farther back and then removed the masking fluid and started on the leaves in the forefront.
Each leave has five layers of paint on it; a yellow, a blue, red, and two shades of green. Very time consuming and the “in the zone” kicked in pretty hard at this point.
See what I mean! I went straight for the cherries without a second thought. Only when I finished them did I remember to take a picture! And when I showed my husband the painting at this point he said it looked Christmassy. 😛 I figured I’d put a little yellow on the cherries to give them a more of a red orange hue and then started tackling the squirrel.
Squirrels do not pose for you! At least not exactly the pose I wanted. Had multiple reference images from online for fur and as close to the pose as I could possibly find (there wasn’t many).
Berry Dryad – Watercolors on hot press Arches paper
And then after that I once again went into “the zone” and finished the painting! Pretty proud of myself I came up with six progress pictures though, but I’m thinking maybe it would be easier to just video tape my process and fast forward it. I think that would look mighty cool. 😀