Today I thought I’d write about my painting process. I know I’ve written a blog about demoing for my painting classes so some of this might sound familiar as I ‘practice what I preach’ as the old saying goes.

This painting along with its companion piece were both inspired by the work of a fellow Spark gallery member, Elaine Ricklin, who it so happens I will be showing with in Spring 2022. Elaine creates the most amazing fashion photographs of department store windows in New York City. Her photographs are what inspired me to take a few of my own to use as painting references. The reference for this painting was taken in downtown Seattle pre Covid when I was on a business trip with my husband. Side bar, the companion piece to this painting was created from a reference photograph I took while in the Big Apple with my oldest daughter and best friend Laurie, also pre Covid. Both paintings focus on the idea of perception and what women do, in this case how they dress, to alter people’s perception of their physical appearance.

As always, I first start with editing and cropping my reference photograph and then create a preliminary sketch in a similar format to the future painting but obviously much smaller in scale.

This sketch helps me problem solve prior to starting the painting. This strategy helps to reduce the number of errors and usually, not always as you will see, eliminates me having to problem solve in the actual painting. Prior to starting the painting process, I first stretch and gesso my canvas. If I’m painting on a canvas verse a wood panel, I always stretch my own canvases. I either reuse old stretcher bars or in the past I had a colleague make my stretcher bars for me. On my ‘to do’ list for the future, I want to learn to make my own stretcher bars.

With the thumbnail sketch complete, the next step is to draw it out on the canvas. I will do this with paint usually but if there is a lot of detail, I often use watercolor pencils to sketch out the image. The nice thing with watercolor pencils, if I need to make a correction, I just get a wet cloth or paper towel and wipe it away and the color then tones the canvas. When drawing out the composition, I also make sure to use a color that I know will be used in the painting so the under drawing harmonizes with the palette I use in the painting.

After everything is sketched out, I mix my palette and begin painting. This painting is large scale, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to get the whole underpainting done in one session. When I painting, I focus on working spherically around the painting. The last painting, I worked from the inside out starting with the focal point (a red dress), for this painting I experimented with painting from the outside in while still working spherically.

As I’m working around the painting (this is what I mean by spherically), I work on all the sections that contain a particular color before I move onto another color. With each new color added, I check the values of the other colors and adjust as I go. For this painting, I decided to simplify the buildings in the background so that the focus remains on the dresses, handbags, and suitcases in the window. One big challenge for this painting was figuring out how to paint reflections and the pushing of values so that the reflections stay secondary and not over power the actual objects in the window.

I still don’t think I’ve mastered the painting of reflections, but I most definitely enjoyed the challenges that it presented. This is where I had to make corrections or adjustments while in the process of painting as the reflections were not working as I thought they would or should. In the mid-section of the painting, I had to paint out an area at least once, I had just finished as the reflection was not reading as it should, and the composition did not look right, even though it was what was in the photographic reference. This is where artistic license comes in and the painting becomes my original composition verses a direct reproduction of the photographic reference.

When it came to painting both the dresses and the suitcases, I also focus on creating the illusion of texture which varied from dress to dress and suitcase to suitcase. I’ve really come to enjoy creating texture with paint over the last couple of years, starting with recreating or rather creating the illusion of fur or in this case the silky texture of a ball gown or the petal-like texture of a cocktail dress; the same goes with the pattern texture of the leather suitcases. The other thing I enjoyed in creating this painting was learning how to work with a monochromatic palette both in the cream-colored cocktail dress as well as in the brown leather suitcases. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while but never had the courage until this year!

Once all the underpainting is down, I go back through the whole painting and fine tune, adjust, sometimes increasing the texture or value in certain areas, or in the case of a reflection that was off, paint it out completely.

The last steps in this painting included putting in the soft and subtle reflective details that appear over the dresses, clean up the edges, and sign the work. Because this painting is so large, I will most likely not frame it as the cost will be too great. It is a gallery wrap painting, meaning the width of the sides are deeper than a standard painting. This painting is two inches deep), and so a frame is not necessary. The final step is to put the wire on the back, so it is ready to hang!

So, there you go, this is my painting process from start to finish. It is both enjoyable while still having moments of frustration but that can be said about most things we do, and so it is with the creative process of a painting.

Creating a Painting

Creating a Lithograph

Creating a Hairbrush Sculpture