Questions for painting

My last painting showed me just how much I’ve been ignoring the planning stage before painting. I’m not saying the painting was bad, just very much outside of the direction I wanted to go in style…it felt like it belonged to the 90s, too saturated and detailed for my tastes.

I spent a while looking at the artists I love, considering the things that annoy me when painting and the things I enjoy, and looking at my own art to see what I was happy with in the past.

May I present to you my new checklist of things to take into account with each painting. Obviously this is tailored towards me, and my own goals, but the idea might be useful to other artists as well.

With some work I’ll hopefully be happier with my paintings. Expect some playing around with style in the future.

 

Rowan Fairy (Finished)

So, for this one I just wanted to paint rowan leaves really, though you can’t see them here yet. I decided to do the sketch without them, just because the sketch was small and things would have gotten confusing with a pile of leaves dumped on top of her.

So in that aspect it worked, however she doesn’t quite feel like she’s interacting with the leaves, hiding behind them when I carefully placed the leaves not to cover the interesting bits of her. Maybe I should have moved those interesting details around so I could fit more leaves over her.

Rather happy with her expression, you can find the reference for it here: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/closeup-portrait-curious-young-girl-looking-200661203