I've told you before that i love to see the process of a painting. To see how it's all come together - the stages that an artist has worked through, the problems they have encountered along the way, and how they have fixed them.

The truth is that every piece of work throws up its own challenges. 

But, that's the fantastic thing about art, you just keep learning! You break through the particular barrier that presents itself and then you're armed with knowledge on how to cope with it the next time.

I find that youtube, or internet searching, forums etc are fantastic for getting me out of a jam, as there will always be someone who has faced the same predicament.

On this particular piece I had the matter of the face being out of proportion - it was slipping off to the left, like a melted candle! The trick to fixing it - look at the piece in a mirror. You see the brain tells the eyes to see what it expects to see, and the mirror trick shows us what's actually there!

The above image is the stage that the painting is now at. I'll work some more on this layer, then let it dry for a few days before tackling the face and body again.

When it's finished i'll pop all the stages up in a little slideshow.

Hope you're having a creative day, and speak soon!

Davy

Just a wee update on the progression of the 'Wallflowers' series of paintings.

So far i've sketched each of these pieces out using some raw umber, and the next stage as we can see in the first two paintings is to block in some tonal values - i've done this with the grey value scale. Im using thinner with this layer so and the result is that you can still see the canvas through them, but that's what happens when you follow the fat over lean principle.

I'm painting each of these pieces in layers, which means that each successive layer has to be a bit more stretchy than the one below it, so that the paint doesn't crack. To this end I add a bit more medium (the 'fat') to each layer as i progress...think of an oil painting like one big sandwich, each layer getting fatter...er, now i'm feeling hungry!

This final guy below, well he's still a very skinny sandwich..just the canvas, toned ground and raw umber sketch at the moment. I think i'll start fattening him up tomorrow or Friday, or else he'll end up eating all the wee butterflies.

I'm going to set up a page for each of these paintings, on the website,  at the weekend, so that I can show each progression. I'm always fascinated when i watch how other artists works come together, so hopefully you'll get a kick out of mine too!

Have a creative day and i'll see ye tomorra!

​Davy