I feel that making studies are important to the process of creating a painting because it allows me to formulate and go through ideas fast and I don't have to have an attachment to the pieces. This unattachment allows me to be looser and freer with the work letting me to take more chances. The studies help me to focus on an idea and find out what I like and what I don't like. When I make the studies I am trying to work out possible compositions and questions I have for the painting using a collection of stock images that I have collected from the Internet. I would collage the images together and I would also paint different images that I was interested and wanted to go into more detail. I also tried to create a couple different technique that I might be interesting in trying in my painting. I like working in studies because it allows original ideas to grow and become something completely different. Once I have figured out some of the questions I was asking myself about the composition and work it is time to start thinking about what size do I want this painting to be to best convey the message that I'm trying express. When I figure out the size of the painting it is time to get started on the real thing.
1st Painting Session
The size canvas I decided use for the painting is 30"x40". The first thing I did on the painting was to draw out the Image on the canvas. I first started to draw it freehand but decided it was taking to long so I projected it onto the canvas and copied it from there. Once I had the drawing done I began to fill in the snow background with different colors of the hue blue. I wanted to fill the shapes with solid color to cover the main part of the snow which will make it easier to complete the snow when I move on to the next step of the painting technique that I have chosen to depict the snow. I have chosen to carefully outline the silhouettes of the other objects in the painting so I don't lose the drawings that are there on the canvas. This will make it easier when it comes time to paint them into the painting.
2nd Painting Session
During this session of painting the first thing I did was to sand paper the background snow area so that it would slightly break down the paint surface letting the white gesso canvas show through. This will help with the painting effect that I plan to use for the snow during a later step. I started to worry that if I continued to work on the background of the painting I would lose the under drawings of the objects in the foreground. So my next step was to do under paintings and outlines of those objects in a Burnt Sienna color before I continued with the background painting techniques.
Painting Session 3
For this session of painting I wanted to start working on the sky in the background of the painting. For my inspiration for the painting technique was an abstract painting by Gerhard Richter. The first thing I did was tape off the horizon line between the ground and sky. Then I mixed four different shades of red and black together and painted it in blended horizontal bands. The next step I mixed three tints of yellow and blue that I applied in little random dabs with the tip of a palette knife to the painting. The last step of this first process of the sky area of the painting was to drag the paint in a vertical direction with a rubber squeegee. Unfortunately I don't own one so I had to make do with what I had at the time which was cardboard. It worked well giving the paint an interesting texture, but I would like to get a rubber squeegee to see the the difference in painting effect.
Painting Session 4
When I began this session of painting I wanted to finish the snow ground by doing an contemporary technique of spattering paint that reminds me of a Post-Impressionism pointillism style. I achieved this by mixing different tints of blue and flicking the paint with my thumb from a brush onto the canvas. After I finished that I began to fill in the sunken cars shapes with paint.I wanted the cars to look like a style that comes from a computer program for mapping images where the shape and contour of items are broken down into solid colors flattening out the objects and making seem like a cartoon style.
Painting Session 5
This session of painting I began by finishing the cars buried in the snow. The next step I moved onto finishing the sky in the background by mixing some different values of blue. I applied the lighter in value blue first and than the darker in value second making sure to leave places exposed of the first under painting. The last step in this session was to drag the paint in the sky with cardboard like last time only this time in a horizontal stroke.
Final Session
For the final session of painting I added the figures in the foreground. I wanted to render the details of these figures more than the other parts of the painting to give them more of a classical painting style. I rendered the figure in the gas mask larger than the other figures to show his importance as the god figure in the painting. Next I moved to rendering the lamb which I did in the colors of red and white. I chose these colors for the foreground of the painting to add balance with the red in the sky, giving the painting a more overall balance of color throughout the painting. I also chose red and white for the lamb because white often symbolizes purity and red to symbolize the blood of the sacrificial lamb. I decided to give the lamb a shadow to represent it as a memory. The last thing that I rendered in the painting was the man. I decided to make him more contemporary looking by painting him in color, giving him a tan line and a current hair cut to symbolize him as modern man (Adam).The last thing I have to do to finish this painting is give a title. I believe I will title it "
In the Know"
