wordpaintrlineofthought: Process Journal: Skyscape painting

I've been trying to paint skyscapes semi-realistically in acrylics. It's been a struggle: to make time every day to paint, to believe that the results will eventually be worth the effort, to just stay at it, no matter how it looks at any given point.

I haven't actually painted in a painterly way for about 30 years. Usually I do abstract backgrounds for my lettering or draw in colored pencil. (So I really should cut myself some slack--but that's another post.)

But then this wonderful artist, Victoria Adams, had a show at the Tacoma Art Museum and I took a short class from her and was totally captivated (some might say obsessed) with trying to paint skies.

After the first two weeks of painting the same painting over 6 or 7 times and pushing it past the version that might have been ok and to a place that definitely isn't, I had the revelation that if I painted 7 paintings instead of one painting 7 times I'd have 7 different ways to take the work. And I could stop on any of them at any time when I thought that maybe I liked what I'd done.

I've been away from painting this way for so long that I can't trust my eye to see whether or not something works (I try to stay away from labeling things "good or bad"--even though sometimes they are just crap). But I find myself actually dreaming about painting at night and having to work on three or four paintings during the day. It's just so darn much fun. I'd forgotten how much I loved the act of pushing the paint around on the canvas. Yummy!

I have decided that I should record this learning process for myself (short memory span--and overloaded circuits) and if it helps someone else at the same time then that's just hot fudge sauce!

Now that I've been painting almost every day for three weeks I've learned a few things.
To recap:
1) Work on several paintings at once.
2) If I get stuck on one work on another
3) If I think one looks pretty good--STOP--do not add another brush stroke
4) Wait at least a day, hang the unfinished things up and walk by them to see if any ideas occur
5) It's ok if my stuff looks amateurish, because it is, I'm learning. Learning is good.
6) Paint MORE

Yesterday's revelations were that I'm working too big and that I should do smaller paintings 8x10ish on heavy gessoed paper to work out design problems before I go to bigger canvases. Also maybe I should do some sketches and draw the ones I like the best onto the canvas instead of just winging it the way Victoria Adams does. After all, she has been painting skies for 30 years while I haven't.

So here are the last 4 versions of the painting that I repainted for 2 solide weeks!