Floating the Big Hole
STAGE 1 TONING THE CANVAS
I always try to tone my canvas in a bright (fine) gold or sunflower yellow acrylic tone. I love the effect it creates in the finished piece, almost as if it’s glowing from within. Next the initial drawing is put down, in this case, in oil. Sometimes it’s just a series of dots and lines to mark compositional and edge placement points, but every notation is important. With architectural paintings, I use a straight edge at this stage to keep my lines neat and exact. For more complex compositions, this “drawing” step may take more time than the paint application itself.
STAGE 2 TRANSPARENT WASH OF DARKS
During the second step, I lay in the darkest “darks” in a transparent wash. As I lay down paint from this point forward I am always aware of how it compares to what colors I have previously painted on the canvas. Creating my paintings is a constant exercise in comparing, light versus darks, thin versus thick paint application, saturated versus unsaturated colors, hard versus soft edges, and so on. I believe that “energy and life” found in my paintings are created through these contrasts.
STAGE 3 FOCAL POINTS
Once the darks are put down, I begin applying paint from the focal point out. In this particular painting, the river leads the viewer to the pile of boulders at the base of the mountain and directly to the paintings primary focal point. Once the focal point has been established, I put most saturated color against unsaturated color and hard edge to draw the viewers eye to that spot, I will continue the piece working from the focal point out. This enables me to continue to compare every stroke that is laid down on my canvas, ensuring that nothing will “compete” with the primary focal point, i.e., no color will be as saturated, no edge as hard and no conflicting areas to draw one’s eye away from this primary point of interest.
STAGE 4 FINISHING TOUCHES
Floating the Big Hole, oil, 36 x 60" (91 x 152 cm)
The process continues in this way, working from the focal point out to the edges of the canvas, constantly comparing each paint stroke. I believe that, as the artist, you decide how the viewer moves through your painting. Here I want the viewer to enter along the river, with the shore on either side guiding you toward the head of the river and the pile of boulders, continuing up into the mountains and then back down to the river, where the process begins again.