Where do painting ideas come from?
Finding a painting idea is certainly a big part of the entire creative process. In the summer, when I go out on location, I get to the end of our lane and then I decide, do I feel like turning right or left? I drive along, looking, waiting, thinking about. Eventually, something tweaks my interest. By the time, I realize, that the subject is worth investigating, I usually have to turn the car around. I take some pictures of what appealed to me and if it still seems to have potential to excite me, I do a 5” x 7” sketch, in ink and watercolour. This could take five or fifteen minutes. Every time, I try to jump right into a painting and skip the preliminary sketch, I regret not having the lighting and the composition figured out.
In the winter, between paintings, the process is the same but different. I just finished three large oils last week and at the time I thought, I never wanted to do oils again; too much time and mess. I looked through several smaller unfinished paintings from the past year but none of them excited me and so I put them aside until they do. For the past couple of days, I sat and looked through photos, again waiting for something to call out to me. A very few of them, I cropped and thought about. Two appealed to me for completely different reasons. For both of these, I started a 7 x 9 inch watercolour. Because I used the backs of some old reject serigraphs, which is great cotton watercolour paper and free, I could use several sheets per idea, as I first of all play with the composition doing multiple quick ink sketches. Once the composition was decided upon, I started on fresh paper in pencil. For the rest of the day, I played with these two ideas. Eventually, the one of pink flamingos decided that it wanted to be an airy precise watercolour on smooth watercolour paper. The other, some of the five islands in autumn, decided itself that it wants to be another large oil!
