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Friday, April 4, 2008

Saving the Stages of a Painting

Once a painting is done, you forget what it looked like in the process. I thought it might be interesting to document the stages a painting goes through. Above is a photo of my watercolor setup.

Here you see the painting with the first light washes laid in. I usually work on the lightest and warmest colors first.

Now I have a few more washes of color added to the painting.

Here I'm beginning to add in some cooler color washes.

Once I've got the lighter washes in, I can start adding darker colors

Adding the black and the final touches makes the other colors "pop". Here's the final painting. (This last one was also photographed using only the sunlight. The lamps made the previous photos have a yellowish color cast.) Now I'm ready to scan this in and create some prints.

12 comments:

Digital Scott's Illustrationblog said...

Very cool image! Fun to see the process too!

Your link from IF is wrong...

Dorothy Reinhardt said...

Hi Scott,

Thanks for letting me know that the link was wrong. I could not figure out how to fix my entry, so I just entered it again.

Teresa said...

saving the process, that's a great idea-- thanks for showing it -- the end result is worth the journey!

Vicki Smith said...

Thanks for sharing the stages of working on your painting. The finished piece is great!

marcisenders said...

Beautiful!

Deb said...

Nice one Dorothy....glad you posted after all!
Deb

Roberta said...

What fun! This is terrific!!!
I love the stages.

Anonymous said...

These are gorgeous, and I loved seeing the process. Thanks for sharing!

Paola De Gaudio said...

Great idea!
Thanks for letting us enjoy the process!
I love this cute couple :)

Anonymous said...

Beautiful work, great idea to document the process. The finished piece is lovely!

Anonymous said...

This was a wonderful process to watch! Simply beautiful! Thank you for taking us along in the process and what a lovely end!

www.indigeneartforms.blogspot.com

Yearn to travel said...

This was a really interesting post. I loved seeing the process. It makes me want to watercolor.