Wednesday 27 November 2019

A Blank Canvas


    Today I started on a new painting, so I thought I would explain how I begin the process.  First I have decide what the subject will be.  Yesterday I looked through my photos and settled on the image of water and rocks that you see above.  Because the photo had different dimensions from the canvas I was going to use, I had to crop the image to fit the canvas.  I will just be painting what you can see between the two turquoise lines.
    I open the image in Photoshop on my computer and play around with it until I like what I see.  I use Photoshop to put a 2 inch grid over the image, and draw out a 2 inch grid on my canvas.  Then I start painting.  I zoom in on my computer to that first square in the upper left hand corner of the image so that is all I can see on my screen.
    I go to the corresponding square on the canvas and try to paint exactly what I see on the screen.  
    I usually paint holding the canvas on my lap.  Because the canvas is 24 inches by 30 inches, it would be pretty awkward painting that corner square, so I made the image horizontal and hold the canvas horizontally when I paint it.
    You can see what I paint every day on my website by clicking on “Current Work” on the top menu.


You can watch my daily progress on the painting at:


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