The evolution of a painting
Today I want to share with you my process of creating new art. For me it sometimes is a very lengthy process with a lot of thought behind it. Usually it starts with a picture that inspires me enough to make me want to paint an artwork from it. I will demonstrate this entire process with my latest painting that I call Geisha (for obvious reasons). I saw an image of a gorgeous woman on pinterest and what inspired me the most about that particular picture was her pose. It looked so dynamic to me. Inspiration works in mysterious ways and I knew I had to paint it the second I saw it. I wouldn’t regain my peace of mind until I started. So I did what any artist would do in that position; I started sketching on my new painting!
At this point in the process I usually haven’t yet decided on what colors I want to use, what style etc. All I knew with this painting was that the pose of the woman in the picture captivated my interest.
When I was somewhat happy with the sketch I decided to start with painting the hair and eyebrows, as well as painting the first layer of shading on her skin. When I started shading I still wasn’t sure what color palette I would use, but since I’m usually drawn to blues that’s what I went with. For the hair I was first contemplating making it a mix of different colors which I think would’ve looked really good if the rest of the painting was kind of neutral, but I decided against it since I figured it might give a messy impression, so I went with a blue/black very dark color instead. For shading the skin I experimented with the colors on a separate piece of paper until I had found this beautiful mix of blue and red. It was just a tiny amount of red which gave the blue such an interesting tone. (see image after the first coat above).
At this point I decided to let my work dry and take a break. With water colors I like to paint in layers which means I have to let it dry in between. I usually take many breaks from the painting and the reason is that when I take a break and come back to it, I will see the painting with fresh eyes and I can more easily spot things that need to be fixed. It also gives me some time to figure out what the next step will be, what colors I want to use and what direction I want to go. Do I want to keep it very neutral and monochrome, in a minimalistic style, or do I want to include some more abstract elements? Do I want to use a lot of splatter techniques? Should I include more details? The amount of decisions I take in order to create the best painting possible are quite many!
In the picture above you can see I have added some darker shades on her skin, filled in the gown she’s wearing, and started to work some more on her eyes and lips. I struggled quite a bit from this point on. One of the things I didn’t know and just couldn’t decide on was what color I wanted the gown to be. I initially wanted it to be blue, then red, but then I thought that red wouldn’t compliment her skin enough so I decided to go in between and use blue and red. I somehow didn’t like how it turned out so I put some more layers of blue on it. In the end I think the color turned out alright. The issue I had with the shading and skin was that the scanner washed out a lot of the colors. So I had to scan it, see how it turned out on the computer, then go back to the painting, try to add some darker colors without overdoing it, scan it again etc. I did this at least 5 times, and I still don’t think that the scanned painting captured the look I was going for. Oh well!
The next step was to work more on the eyes. I decided to, after doing some research on how a geisha would wear her make up, add some red around the eyes. I was somewhat scared to do this in case it would ruin the painting. With watercolors you can’t really erase anything. So if you make a mistake, there’s no turning back. Sometimes if the color is still wet you can blot it off with some tissue but it doesn’t work if you painted with very pigmented and quite dry paint because it dries up so quickly. Anyhow, I think the red turned out nicely, but I realized that the painting lacked something. It was a bit too plain still. I had also up until this point questioned the hair, because it somehow looked a bit awkward. I decided I could probably fix it once I had scanned it to my computer.
I decided to add some more color to the lips and eyes, and I think the red made a nice contrast to the rest of the painting which was mostly blue. Again at this point I was very afraid to ruin it. Which is also a reason why I kept scanning the painting in between coats in case I ruined or overworked it. I still felt like it lacked something but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it.
After contemplating this for a few days I decided to leave it as is. When I start a painting I can usually sense right away if it’s going to be a really good one or not. This was one of those really good ones which is why I was extra careful with it and what direction I wanted to take. I can always go back to it in the future if I wanted to, but at least for now I’m quite happy with the result! The perfectionist in me is always finding something that could’ve been better but isn’t it also a bit of the charm with art, that it’s never completely perfect? I think so!
