It’s a little while since I’ve done one of these step by step posts.
This one covers the last painting I did before returning to full time work, and was originally intended to be the first of a series of flower paintings. The series is on hold indefinitely now, but writing this one up has reminded me of some aspects that I was intending to incorporate into the rest of the series, ideas about colour and design.
It might be a little more difficult for me to paint flowers now, but revisiting this painting has started to get my creative juices flowing again, just a little. For the first time in a little while I’m starting to feel the call of the easel again.
This painting was done last January over about two weeks. Ordinarily, flowers would never last that long but I was very lucky with these chrysanthemums. By the time I got to the last few days the flowers themselves had died, but I made a point of getting them done first so it wasn’t a big problem. The leaves lasted a bit better but also went the way of all things eventually.
Regular readers will probably know by now that I prefer to work directly from life and avoid using photos. For this painting however, I did take a reference photo before I started painting, just as a backup in case the flowers didn’t make it.
Whilst perhaps 99% of the painting was done from life, I did use the reference photo for finishing some details on the flowers and the leaves at the end. I’m pretty comfortable about using a photo that way, since all the values, colour notes and the quality of the edges had already been well established from life by that point. The photo was mainly used to help me to refine the forms of some of the petals, and also meant that I didn’t panic so much to get the flowers done quickly at the beginning. I’m sure that helped me to take my time a little more at the start.
Setting Up
Here we are at the beginning, the drawing out stage. This photo is not quite from my viewpoint, but gives a good idea of how I set this one up.
I’m working pretty much sight size, but since I’m looking down on the flowers I can’t really step back from the easel. It’s going to mean missing out on one of the main advantages of sight size, seeing the overall effect more than the details. But at this point I’m hoping that as long as I bear that in mind I won’t get too bogged down in detail too early. I love these top-down viewpoints so I reckon it’s worth the sacrifice.
Drawing Out
I could have drawn the flowers straight onto the panel of course, but here I’m drawing them out first on paper. It’s more forgiving and quicker I find. I’ll be transferring the drawing to the panel once I’m done. First, I’ve blocked in the main shapes of the flowers, and at this point I’ve just started to refine them and draw the petals that make up the main shape of each flower.
I’m not going for absolute accuracy since that would take far too long. But I do want to get as much in as I can. We have a natural tendency to reduce what we see to schematics if we don’t look carefully. Certainly I found that if I wasn’t careful, I’d tend to draw more uniform petals that conformed more to my internalised mental image of a petal shape than what I actually saw.
I guess that might not matter so much for a more stylised approach, but I’m looking for as much naturalism as I can get. I want these flowers to live on the panel. I want the distinct character of each flower to make itself felt.
Here I’ve completed the drawing out. I haven’t worked into the flowers too much, but their individual outlines are fairly well established, and some of the more distinct leaves have been drawn in too. I think this was about two day’s work.
Transferring the drawing to the Panel
The next stage is to transfer this drawing to the panel. I’m sure there are a hundred different ways to do this, but I like the method I use since it means I have nothing but paint on the panel itself. The first job is to trace the drawing. I trace it onto a sheet of grease-proof baking paper which works well and is cheap as chips. Once the drawing is traced, I flip the paper and spread paint over the back of it. For this one I used burnt umber thinned with a little turps. It doesn’t take much, just a thin covering.
Now the paper can be fixed to the panel (of course the drawing needs to be the same size as the panel for this) and going over the drawing again with a hard pencil will transfer it to the panel.
This picture shows the tracing from the back, with the burnt umber having just been applied. You can’t hang around too long at this point, or the paint will start to dry and won’t transfer so well. After this I flipped it over and inserted the panel underneath. Then it’s just a simple case of going over the drawing again.
Once the drawing has been transferred it’s a good idea to fix it with something. I let this one dry overnight, and then went over the lines with retouch varnish. The reason for this is that the first thing I’ll be doing is scrubbing in a background tone.
Establishing the Background Value
I want the background tone to bleed over the edges of the drawing and into the flowers. Having the background go physically underneath the flowers will help with the feeling of depth and three-dimensionality of the flowers. But if I don’t fix the drawing, I’ll scrub it out. Once it’s been varnished over I can scrub over it as much as I like without erasing it. Apparently ink is good for this too, but I haven’t tried it so can’t comment.
At this stage I’ve transferred the drawing and roughly scrubbed in a background tone.
The Panel
The panel itself is linen primed with a couple of coats of lead white. Over this I’ve painted a value 8 Munsell neutral and let it dry for a few weeks. You can see the neutral poking through on the flowers. Having a light-ish ground should help the colours to show, since oil paint is basically translucent I don’t like to paint on a darkground. But a flat white ground makes it hard to judge the colours and values as they go on. This seems like a nice compromise.
The panel is constructed from fine weave linen fixed onto a moisture resistant MDF support (sealed first with PVA). The linen is attached with rabbit skin glue, sticking and sizing all in one go. Hopefully I’ll do a post on how I make these panels soon (sorry Shaun, I know I promised you that post – I will get to it eventually!)
For the background tone, I’ve chosen a warm, slightly purplish brown. Most of this is going to be covered eventually, but some of it will still show through whatever background colour I decide to use (I haven’t decided on the background colour at this point).
I should mention that I’d already done a small, quick study in oils on board of these flowers. I’d also pre-mixed all most of the colours I was going to use for the painting, based on the study. I’ll talk a bit about that in a little while.
So my background colour at this stage is a kind of dark average of the colours I’ll be using on the flowers. I took the shadow colour of the petals and added in some of the pink. Hopefully this should give the painting some unity, with this background colour still showing a little at the finish.
Beginning the Flowers
Now at last I can start on the flowers.
I’m painting them fairly directly, but loosely to start with. I’ve got my drawing underneath, so all I need to think about at this stage is hitting the colour notes and balancing the values as well as I can.
I’ve started each one by putting a little of the background green of the leaves around the flower first. As before, this is to (hopefully) allow me to paint the edges of the petals over it and help the flowers stand out more and have more depth. I’ve also started covering some of the background tone at this stage, so I can see how the flowers are going to work against it.
Since I haven’t decided on the background colour yet, I’m using a pre-mixed Munsell neutral of about the value I think I’ll want the background to be. This is just scrubbed over too, and some of the brown is showing through. Already at this stage, scrubbing the neutral over the brown is starting to set up a kind of optical shimmer in the background. although it wasn’t really part of the plan, it’s a nice effect so I’m going to try and keep it.
Here’s a close up of the start on the flowers.
They’re pretty loose at this point, I’m mostly just trying to hit the colours right. The edges are mostly soft apart from some of the petals which I want to stand out. Already some of the form of the flowers is starting to show though. It doesn’t take much. Personally I think that careful control of edges is almost as important as good drawing and values in describing form.
This is pretty much direct painting. I’m looking to hit the colours right first time, and hopefully won’t be changing them that much as I go on. I think I’m most comfortable with this way of painting because I’ve done so much ‘alla prima’ painting. But I will be coming back to these flowers repeatedly to refine them, working into the more general statement of colour notes I’ve got at the moment.
I think a more direct way of working suits flowers well. No doubt there’s plenty of other way of handling them though.
Here is the first pass on the flowers completed. I wanted to get to this stage as quickly as I could, now I can start to relax a bit more and take my time. I’ve pretty much decided at this point that how much I work on this painting, how much detail will be added, will be decided by how long the flowers last.
From this point onwards I continued working into the flowers, defining the petals and bringing up the detail. Working from left to right, by the time I’d got to the flowers at the far right the ones on the left were dry enough to work on some more.
Since this stage of the painting was fairly drawn out, and probably took most of the time, now is probably a good time to talk a little about how I arrived at the colours for the flowers and the leaves.
Getting the Colours Right
I’ve mentioned before how I’ve been using Munsell to help me get a handle on values. The series of posts on Munsell value studies have gone into that in some depth, but the Munsell chips can also be a handy little helper for judging colour too.
By and large, I’m looking for accurate colour in my paintings and have been for some time. Of course I’m aware that accurate colour may not always be what a painter wants, and that very beautiful work can and has been made by painters using anything but realistic colour. A picture is a world unto itself and the colour should really be defined by the needs of the picture as much as anything else.
But I also believe that being able to accurately reproduce colours is an important fundamental skill in painting, at least this kind of painting, in the same way that being able to draw accurately is a fundamental skill.
With regard to drawing, learning to draw accurately is, I believe, liberating rather than limiting. Accuracy is not a goal in itself, but a means to an end, a way to stretch your drawing vocabulary so that when you do want to express something through mark making you have the skill to do it.
I look at colour and value in the same way. Certainly I’m not able to judge colour accurately yet, it’s a very difficult skill to attain since our visual systems have evolved for other purposes. I’ve found the Munsell chips to be a great help here, and invested in the Munsell book of colour some time ago for this reason. It’s basically a huge book of colour chips organised by hue, value and chroma.
I use the chips in two ways. Firstly by laying them against the object I’m painting to find out what the local colour is, and secondly by holding them up in front of the subject, from my viewpoint, to judge the colour of shadow and light areas. This gives me a good idea of how light is affecting the local colour. For example, in the case of the petals on these flowers, I found that the local was a very light ‘YR’, or yellow orange.
In the shadow areas the colour pulled more towards yellow and was higher in chroma than the lights, although usually the opposite is the case. By checking various areas of the flowers and leaves, I came up with a range of colours that should enable me to get very close to the colours I’m seeing.
The Palette
Here’s the palette I used for this painting:
The left hand side of the palette has the colours for the flowers. The colours are arranged from light to dark to help with modelling of the forms as they’re affected by light and shadow. There are two pinks for the centre parts of the flowers, one slightly more towards purple, and a string of colours which look like low chroma browns but are actually ‘YR’s for the petals.
Having them arranged by value like this means that I can mix between them and keep the values consistent. Very handy.
At the top right I’ve got a string of Munsell neutrals, useful for dropping the chroma of my other colours when I want to, and also a blue-green colour for the background which was added later in the painting process than I’ve covered so far. The greens at the bottom left are for the leaves.
Now I know a lot of people don’t like ‘set palettes’ like this, since they think it will stultify their creativity. Personally I don’t agree, but that aside, a palette like this is extremely useful if you’re trying to accurately match the colours you see. I’ll post more about exactly how at some point, but if I don’t want this post to turn into a book I’d better leave that aspect there for now. Suffice to say I had all – or at least most of -my colours mixed and ready before I started painting.
Back to the painting. At this stage I’ve started to lay in the general colour of the leaves, and have filled in more of the background. The flowers are pretty much finished at this point, but I’ll be going back to fiddle with them a bit more at the end.
I’ve started to introduce a little low chroma blue into the background now, for no other reason that it seemed to work nicely with the pinks in the chrysanthemums. the background in the set up is a neutral grey cloth, but the painting felt like it needed something more. Still, at this point it’s just a hint and the background is still mostly neutral.
Changes to the Composition
It was about this stage, or just before it, that I realised I had a balance problem with the composition. It was weighted to far to the right. Although it hadn’t really struck me from just looking at the painting, when I checked it in the mirror I keep behind me it was very noticeable. So I’ve started trying to tweak it by removing the leaves at the far right and adding a little flower on the left.
Coming towards the finish now. You can just see on the left of this pic that the flowers are giving up the ghost so I can’t work much longer. The leaves are starting to die too and I haven’t got them finished yet.
The main changes here are that I’ve removed one of the flowers on the right to try and balance things up, and the blue-green in the background has been strengthened. In places, especially around the bottom, the original purplish-brown background tone is still showing through.
I’ve also re-introduced some dabs of neutral grey into the blue, matching the value, so the background has a bit more life than it would have if it was just flat colour. I like it, it doesn’t show up so well in this pic though. You can see it a bit better in the picture at the top of this post.
Finishing
Past this point there wasn’t much to do. The last details on the flowers and the leaves were finished using the photo reference (gasp!) and the little flower on the left was changed about a bit, mostly again to balance the picture better.
Here’s a last pic of a close up of the flowers, about two thirds of the way through I think. They look quite detailed in the painting, but although I did do a little more work on them than this, they’re still made up mostly of amorphous blobs.
Personally, I love the kind of painting that dissolves into abstract patches of paint up close but gels into a realised picture when you step back. I’m a big fan of Velazquez for that reason, among many others. I think it makes for a more interesting, and in some ways more life like – and lively – picture than when everything is perfectly finished. I’m no Velazquez of course, and never will be, but I’d like to be able to incorporate some of that if I can. These flowers aren’t the best painted flowers in the world either, but they’re probably the best I’ve done so far.
This has been quite a long post, but still I’m not sure I’ve adequately covered all the stages that went into this painting. I suppose the most glaring omission is an in depth description of the use of the Munsell colour chips to find the colours. But hopefully I’ll get to that soon. I’m still taking time off from the easel at the moment whilst I get used to my new routine, and it’s been giving me some time to think about where I want my painting to go.
A couple of weeks ago my painter friend Ilaria told me to stop messing about with casts and exercises and to start doing some real painting.Well, Ilaria, I might be coming round to your point of view. Writing this post has reminded me of some ideas I had that grew out of this painting that I’d largely forgotten about.
I think this was the first painting when I started to get excited about colour and colour harmony for it’s own sake. It’s opened up avenues for experimentation that will probably be finding their way into the next few paintings.
If that happens it’ll also give me a chance to post about colour a bit more. Colour vexed me enormously when I started painting again three years ago, just as it does for many learning painters. I would have been better off back then forgetting about it entirely and concentrating on drawing and value. It took me a long time to learn that lesson.
Perhaps now it’s time to start opening up to some new possibilities.
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Beautiful Paul, thanks for this post!
I learn a lot whit your words, your work, your blog.
Muchas gracias Paul, por tu generosidad.
Mis saludos .
Andrés.
Paul,
That is really gorgeous. The colors just glow in such a soft ,lovely way. I learn so much from your posts. As a VERY amateur artist, it really helps me to see the step by step process, to see what to do first, second third, etc. If you ever do a landscape for your demonstration/post, I would love to see the same step by step process.
Excellent study and evoloution of work
fabulous glow in those petals!
Paul, thanks for posting this, it is really fantastic. You are such a motivation for me and I learn so much from you. Its always a delight to find an email in my inbox from you and I cannot wait to see what you are up to. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for sharing this Paul…you have no idea how much this helps…especially for a novice like me who has never attended art school but always wanted to paint.
Beautiful flowers and wonderfully informative post. I was especially interested in the premixed colors. I paint with watercolors, not oils, and I recently (like last week!) realized how important it is to really choose the colors before you begin to paint. Next painting, I’m trying premixing!
Hey Paul,
Beautiful painting. I am learning so much from you. I was just reading your old post about the Old Iron color study when I noticed you mentioning how you blend over the surface of your painting with a mixture of stand oil and turp.
At our atelier we have a similar technique. We call it taking out passages, which is when we refine our initial block in with the aid of medium. We mix different ratios of medium depending on how finished we want to make everything. Generally in the beginning we use a 1 part stand oil, 1 part damar varish and five parts turp mixture. We graduate onto 1 to 1 to 3 parts turp as we want the paint to fatten up around the lighter areas. We either apply the medium directly to the painting or we mix it up with a local color and applied a scumble if we had trouble getting the exact colors the 1st time around.
When you have more time, could you do a post explaining how you use the munsell values to adjust the chroma of the paint? It’s rather different than the method we employ at school but it seems to be more logical and I would be interested in learning how you do it.
Excellent, Paul & beautiful work.
I’ve never tried the oil transfer-seems like the paint will get all over the panel, but will give it a go.
I learn so much from your posts! Look forward to your color evaluation.
Hope the job is going well and some of the pressures are lessening.
Paul thanks for the great demo!! Very inspiring, because the worrying about flowers dying faster than I can paint them has made me hold back on trying to paint them, but now I see how it can be done!
I like what you were saying about drawing the petals as they are, not as the mind conceives of them. Reminds me of what Ted Seth Jacobs says, “draw a portrait of every shape”.
Also, I started to write to you last time about people telling you what to paint, to stop messing around with exercises etc. I think you will relate when I say – every small success I’ve had with learning to paint and draw is because I did exactly what I knew I HAD to do and stopped listening to people telling me what I should or should not do. Art is about finding and sticking to your own internal compass, which has served you well. Obviously, this painting was a challenge you felt ready for.
Finally, I had to chuckle about “cheap as chips” because in the US we say “cheap as dirt” and it made me wonder – are chips as cheap as dirt?
Hi Paul,
How did you do-it? How can you find the time to work and paint? From the force of those petals I would say you like to paint better. I must say that I am most impressed by the explanation of your modus operanda as well. You are a great writer. Have you ever consider to do that commercially? You spend a lot of time and energy on your blog witch is second to none and from witch i lerned a lot. I like your painting big time and the point of view you choose is a winner. A great display of craftmenship but above all a love for Art.
Thank you Paul you are inspirational.
Excellent demo, Paul!
Thanks so much for the detailed insight into your process, both physical and cerebral.
And, what a gorgeous piece of work.
Wow. Thanks for all the comments. I am now officially embarrassed.
Rich, great to hear from you. Hope things are good with you. If readers want to check out another approach to painting flowers, have a look at Richard’s site for some unspeakably beautiful flower paintings. By the way Rich, it’s about time you updated that site, you haven’t even got your best pieces on there!
Andreas, thanks for the comment. I was going to try to reply in Spanish but I’d have to use an online translator and would probably end up saying something rude to you by mistake. But it’s great to hear that you’re enjoying the site.
Betsy, thanks, I’m glad you like it. I’m glad too that the posts are helping you. Bear in mind though that there are many ways to approach painting, this is just a way that works for me – and it’s continually changing. The best way forward I think is to try a bunch of stuff, keep what you get on with and ditch what you don’t.
Thanks Dimitris, see you at RP 🙂
James, thanks very much. It’s all about the light for me, so that’s very nice to hear.
Hi Wilma, I’ll do my best to keep them coming.
Radha, welcome. Lots of people would disagree with me no doubt, but I’m a firm believer that it’s possible to teach yourself this stuff with a little help. There’s lots of good and helpful info out there on the web these days. Some bad info too, but you learn to differentiate one from the other by trial and error. Don’t feel you can’t do it just because you can’t get to college.
If you want my advice, I’d concentrate on drawing first. Learn to draw as accurately as you can, and practice your values before moving onto colour. It takes time, but it’s quicker in the long run I think. Feel free to email me if you want some ideas for useful stuff to try your hand at.
Thanks Maggie, I’ll hopefully get some time to go into the pre-mixing more at some point. What got me started with the Munsell stuff and premixing is all online at the rational Painting forum. Sign up and have a read there, you won’t go wrong at that site, it’s a veritable gold mine.
Jennifer, thanks for that comment, very informative. I’m not nearly so careful with my proportions as you are being taught but I really should be. Making the medium more fatty as you work up the painting is something I should do more.
A couple of questions: What advantage do you get from using the medium especially fat in the lights? Where are you studying?
As for the Munsell stuff, I will be posting more about it at some point. Using Munsell in controlled strings unlocked colour for me, it unlocked my palette, no exaggeration. But if you want to learn more about it in the meantime, go direct to the source, the rational Painting forum. It’s an approach to colour that’s been developed (and is still being developed) by Graydon Parrish. Quite frankly, it rocks. There’s lots of atelier people in the membership there too, so you’ll be in good company.
Thanks Marsha, and thanks for popping in. It’s always great to see a comment from you and to know you’re still reading. I can’t really keep up with emails these days but at least we can keep in touch here.
The job is going fine, I’ve really landed on my feet. Very nice people, interesting work and I can pay the bills. What more could one want? (well, being able to paint all day every day would be nice of course…)
Hi Sadie, good to hear from you. and while you’re here, Congratulations on making it into the ARC Salon! Woohoo! Most richly deserved, I must say.
That’s a wonderful quote from Ted Seth Jacobs, it says exactly what I mean, but much more clearly and concisely. that’s exactly what I was trying to get at when I was talking about getting the individual character of every flower, as if each one is a little portrait.
I do relate to what you say about following your inner compass, absolutely. As for exercises, I’ll never stop doing them. I think they’re invaluable and there never comes a point where you can say, “That’s it, I’ve learned enough and now I can just paint.” I don’t think Ilaria would disagree with that though, her approach is to learn ‘on the job’ so to speak, and it obviously works for her. Horses for courses.
Chips are cheap, but not as cheap as dirt. I think you call them ‘french fries’ or something equally confusing. They’re chips dammit! Chips! And the best ones are cooked in lard.
Hi Mariano, thanks for the kind words. Actually this painting was done well before I started the job, I haven’t painted for about six weeks now. This painting was two weeks of intensive work, all by natural light, which I couldn’t do and hold down a job at the same time.
>Have you ever consider to do that commercially?
Hehe, well, maybe one day…
Cindy! Thanks, and I’m honoured to be graced by your painterly presence! For those that don’t know, Cindy and her comrade in arms Lisa have set up what is shaping up to be a fantastic resource for painters at Art Studio Secrets. Highly recommended.
Paul,
Thank you again for a wonderful post. The painting is gorgeous, and your commentary very helpful.
I am also very interested in how you use the Munsell system, so count me as one of those who look forward to your post when you have time!
I have been exploring color systems for some time, and have considered pre-mixing a palette for a particular painting, as you have done in this exercise. My guess was it would simplify the actual painting process, as well as unify the image. There have been a number of professional portrait pinters who do something similar (Daniel Greene and Michael Del Priore come to mind) You have inspired me to go ahead and develop a working method for my own paintings. Thank you.
Hi Paul,
Thank you so much for taking the time to do such a great post. As always, your demonstrations are clear and the accompanying photos and descriptions are really helpful! Keep up the great work!
Fantastic, Paul. I’m going to need a couple of passes through this to really absorb it all. Thanks, as always, for your efforts to write it all up so the rest of us can learn from it.
Now hurry up and win the lottery so you can quit your day job and get on with your REAL work, here! 🙂
Lovely painting Paul as always. How do you manage with lighting your subjects? I paint by a large window which gives good light for the canvas but also floods the subject and destroys any attempt to get a bit of chiaroscuro with directional lighting. Admittedly this picture has a feel of natural light but others, like the iron, seem spotlight, how do you manage this without working in a darkened room?
Thanks as always for sharing your progress.
nice work, thanks for shering the step by step
Hi Lisa, the Munsell thing is a fairly deep topic, so it’ll take quite a few posts to cover how I’m using it myself in any helpful way. I really need to think about how I can do it justice and get the advantages across as clearly as I can.
First, there’s the Munsell method itself of evaluating colour by hue, value and chroma. Then there’s the set palette, with is another aspect in itself. then there’s judging and matching the colours we see, which is another.
Absolutely, premixing the colours does expedite the painting process. All you have to think about is the painting itself, and not having to continually stop to mix colours frees you up and helps the flow of the painting I think. I think set palettes were much more common in the past.
Hi Karen, nice to hear from you! Hope you’re still finding time to paint around your grand-kids. Whenever I see your name on the web now, I have a mental image of you painting with a small child strapped to your back 🙂 Readers might want to check some of Karen’s lovely work.
LOL Steve, you do make me laugh! Allow me to return the compliment, and to thank you for the great work you’re doing posting your practice with Graydon’s value sphere exercises at RP.
Hi David, and thanks. Yes, this one was done next to a window. I much prefer natural light if I can get it, it’s so much more…poetic. But you’re also right about the iron, that one was done under artificial lighting. Do you use a shadow box/ You can do a lot to control even natural diffuse light with a few sheets of card.
When I’m working under artificial lights I put heavy felted fabric over the window to black it out, it’s the only way to control the light. I use Solux bulbs. The big advantage of course is that you can work at any time of day, but I do miss natural light.
Hi Jesus, thanks. I hear you were in on Lisa and Cindy’s virtual painting workshop. It looked great and I think it’s a fantastic idea. I hope it was a positive experience for you.
Beautiful painting and a well described process, one that I admire immensely, though, in both an exciting and bittersweet way, my years of digital work keep me from using similar processes. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to put together a demonstration revealing how I go about getting from a setup to a painting, melding digital technologies with traditional oil painting.
Really admire your work…
Fabulous! Thanks for posting that Paul, I see I’m a bit late watching it… but I loved seeing your process i the step-by-step. The result is wonderful. (Nice choice of greay for the background). Want more!
masses of useful information here as usual – I\’ll need to read and re-read this again! I noticed that you had linked to some of your commenter\’s sites- on some people\’s blogs when you click on the commenter\’s name it links to their website or blog – I think it would be great if you could have this on your blog as it would be fascinating to see everyone\’s work.
Hi Paul – This is really a wonderful painting (and I’m sorry I’m so late in posting this to tell you so). I really appreciate the nuts and bolts, step by step methods you show here. But – while I do understand and appreciate the “show every petal” aspect of the final painting, why bother drawing out every petal in the inital drawing phase? wouldn’t it save time to do a more general, wipe out method in your blockin and save the painted petals for the final phase?
How is CHANGE – growth, decay, etc. – built into your equation? This is one of the concepts I struggle with when I paint flowers.
I remain a huge admirer of you and your work. 🙂
Hello Paul, I just today have seen your new post. I wish you could see your work as we do.I know artists see the work that went into the piece, whereas others only see the beauty.This piece has a personality that jumps off the page. Thank you for giving me a place to go to keep me connected to art!
Amazing! Amazing! You are so generous to share this with us and your work is beautiful!!!!
Wowwww!!
Thanks Christienne – and thanks also for reminding me how long it is since I wrote anything for the site! I must remedy that soon.
Hi Paul, I’ve been interested in following your progress since you returned to work full time. How have things been going since April? Have you found time on the train or on weekends to continue with your artwork?
Hi Michelle,
To be honest I think I underestimated a little – well, more than a little – how big a change it was going to be returning to full time work. There have been times when I’ve found even thinking about painting depressing, frankly. The job is quite demanding and so is painting (as I’m sure you know!) and there just isn’t time and energy to do both well. But apart from that I think I’ve needed some time to make the mental adjustment required to come to terms with the fact that I’m no longer defined by painting – I’m defined by my job now.
However, it’s certainly not all negative. I enjoy the job most of the time, the people I work with are all great and after all, I’m lucky to have a job at all. Paying bills is not to be sniffed at either 🙂
I have kept up with drawing on the train and at odd moments though. Energy has been returning a little of late and I have a new series of posts coming together, a demonstration of the drawing copies I’ve been doing, which I hope will be interesting and/or instructive. Look for the first post or two this weekend. I’m going to try and get the site back on track now. I’m also about to start an evening class in life painting so I should have something to write about apart from Sarget copies soon 🙂
Thanks for looking in and leaving a comment. I’m encouraged to know that there are still people out there waiting for the next post. I’ll try not to keep you waiting too long!
Hi Paul.. Have you ever tried affixing the drawing to a solid support, and sizing it with shellac or acrylic matte medium, rather than using the tracing method? The, oil painting right over the original drawing.
Hi Hone, nice to hear from you. I’ve never tried sized paper as a support, must admit I like my fine linen.
Please feel free to post a little more about it if you like though, I’ve read about how you use it before and it sounds very effective.
In fact, if you’ve got the time to write a good description of your method, email it over and I’d be happy to post it here. I’m sure it would be very interesting for the people that read here.
Thank you for your humble approach, and patient explanations. I am a beginning painter with no formal training, and was shocked to see the finished drawing took two days of work! Your work is simply beautiful–thank you for sharing the steps with me.
Hi Ellen, thanks for popping in and leaving a comment.
I still consider myself a beginner in many ways, and hope I always will. It’s the best way to keep an open attitude and an enquiring mind I think.
For what it’s worth, one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned is to slow right down and to take the time to really look. I used to work much faster, but I think that when I stopped trying to rush through pieces and gave myself time to really look, I improved much more quickly.
The pay off is that it’s then easier to work more quickly after you’ve got into the habit of careful looking first I think.
This turned out a really beautiful piece of work
Thanks Paul
I am so glad to have stumbled upon your site! I am a high school art teacher in Iowa, in the US. I am currently teaching my first college level studio painting class. I mostly paint commissioned portraits myself, so was feeling a bit unprepared to teach still life, which is required. Sitting and reading your descriptions of your process has helped tremendously, and has inspired me. I now feel like I can’t wait to paint some still lifes myself. I love your work and your writing. I wish I could have you as a teacher! I will be sharing your site with my students tomorrow.
I loved seeing your process of painting this artwork, you have an amazing talent, I love Chrysanthemums, I love the special details in the leaves, absolutely stunning, well done.
Hello Paul,
Some months ago I visited your portfolio site and was struck immediately by the quiet, retreating quality of your still lifes. I found them almost painfully lovely; then read that evoking “contemplative stillness” was one of your aims. I simply had to tell you how completely you have succeeded in that. I have recently started (paid) work again and am finding that, lack of energy aside, there’s a huge freedom for me in my “off” time being completely mine, and has lead to an outpouring of drawing. I look forward to more posts from you when you are able. Many thanks.
Thanks Frith. It’s really good to hear that that quality came across. I very much appreciate you taking the time to let me know.
Great also to hear that going back to full time work hasn’t stopped you from drawing, and even had the opposite effect. What kind of work are you doing?
For myself I’m just too busy at the moment to draw or paint much, and haven’t been able to keep up with the site unfortunately. But I will get back to it at some point and start posting again, as soon as time allows.