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.

Another One Completed

I painted another kokeshi pair today. These are sorta cute, but I'm not sure they are really a pair because the boy has a different base and the eyes and noses are different. The ones with the round eyes remind me of Charlie Brown. There is a George Schultz Museum here in N. California, which I visited last summer with my cousin Christina. She and her mom are big Snoopy fans, both of them even have Snoopy tattoos. They tried showing their Snoopy tattoos to get in free to the museum, but the ticket sellers were unimpressed.