Yesterday I bought an inexpensive 20″x24″ canvas mounted on board to do some ‘thumbnails’. I don’t think they are true thumbnails because they are bigger than what I normally think of as thumbnails, but the idea is the same. I had some ideas in my head for larger paintings so I sketched each one out, then blocked in some color just to see how these ideas really looked on canvas.
I thought this was necessary after the disasterous 30″x30″ painting I did a couple of weeks ago. When you have a giant field painted and decide you don’t like the color, it’s a pretty big effort to drag the canvas outside and use turp to wipe off the entire field! And then if you paint it a different color and still don’t like it, it gets old fast to drag the canvas outside again and do more wiping. Hence the thumbnails! It’s so much easier to take a rag and wipe off a little field in an ugly color instead of a huge one. And anyway, I do like planning my paintings. I’ve tried not planning them and I think the process of finding your way through a painting, and the surprises that come with not planning are wonderful, and even though I’ve tried that method, in the end I’m a planner. So I’m going to embrace that and sketch and paint thumbnails as part of my preparation.
I like the red barn best so I’m going to paint that one larger.
Great post, it’s wonderful to see your process!! The red barn practically leaps out, LOVE that one!
Embrace it, then! The red barn one is striking.
I love your post about your notebooks, too…it’s funny, just reading that post gave me the same sense of calm as when I do the same- jot my thoughts and ideas down in these little books.
Wow… you ARE a planner.
The red barn will look nice… especially the way you’ve captured that shadow up there!! Looking forward to seeing it..
Thirty by thirty IS big!!… I think that sometimes making paintings bigger and still interesting is a problem in itself!! (Not that I’ve had a lot of experience in big paintings, … it just seems so.)