I get asked all the time how I go about starting a painting. Do I work from a drawing that I then copy onto the canvas? Directly from a model? Or from photos?
Do I sketch first on the canvas? With charcoal? Pencil? Paint?
Truth be told, I don’t have a single “method”. I try it all. Sometimes I work directly from a model, sometimes from photos, sometimes from both, or neither.
One thing I almost never do is work on a painting from a preliminary drawing. I draw, regularly, but I don’t draw to turn the drawings directly into paintings. There is not a direct and linear path from one to the other. I draw because drawing is a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself, and needs nothing else to recommend it. Drawing is full of its own challenges and rewards, and it has the capacity to inform all my work.
At the moment, I’m drawing Iceland, so the title of this blog post, “In the Beginning” seems to relate. Iceland is a landscape in the process of coming into being, and so it truly is “In the Beginning”. This one is charcoal and chalk on paper, and it’s a largish drawing, 46″x66″.
Talisman (II), Charcoal, Chalk, Pencil on Paper, 45.75″ x 65.25″, 2014
stunning and moving……haunting and beautiful…..
this is re the painting on your blog post…..not sure of the title. It would be a piece I would acquire in my ‘fantasy collection’.
You rock.
marilyn
Marilyn, do you mean the drawing in this post of the building in Iceland? It is technically a drawing, not a painting, done with charcoal and chalk on paper. The lines between drawing and painting are blurring for me these days though. This piece is untitled thus far.
Thanks for the nice comments!
Barbara