I’ve been painting in my studio today, as usual.
Of course there are days when I work at different places, traveling somewhere I always keep my sketchbook with me. I sometimes make quick croquis on my phone, I’ve even made some sketches on paper napkins in a restaurant. Those don’t need to be elaborate sketches, but seeing a painting scene I have to put down at least a line or two, it serves as a sort of spelling word when I am back in the studio. Just a glimpse on my sketch and I remember the scene, colors, volumes. Which is just contrary to the photographs that were not taken by me, no matter how good they are, they won’t work for me in the sense of evolving into the painting scenery.
Second best help, alongside my own sketches, are photos taken by me. I usually take many almost similar pics and later, working at home, decide which one to use.
But besides taking sketches as references for my future painting at my studio I don’t paint outdoors.
Yet in a sense, I do bring outdoors to my studio, like I did today. Which simply means I go for a walk early in the morning and think about painting. According to the mood of the day, I pick flowers, twigs, some grasses. Making a bouquet from all that greenery, picking the vase and setting a still life in my studio, this altogether is already a part of my painting process. For when the floral still life is set to paint, it means I already know what I’d love to achieve. Which then isn’t always easy, sometimes much harder as anticipated. But contrary to the sketch of mine that can rest in my sketchbook ages just to give me all info upon just one glimpse of it, the still life I work on has to be painted as fast as possible, not because often the plants won’t survive, but mostly as the colors change so much with the days that after a gap of several days without painting I really hardly catch up to finish the work, my mood, the colors, the feelings change too much….
I’ve picked some yellow flowers today. Rudbeckias and solidago yellows are just glowing in the garden these days, but then I’ve found some magenta pink roses and those colors together were stunning. With some greenish late hydrangea blossoms the bouquet was ready to paint. I took a white tea jug with a blue stripe and when this impromptu still life with some lemons was set on the table by the window in my studio I added a red napkin, to get all these colors in an equilibrium of some sort. From here on the painting process was like a sort of meditation, painting has evolved by itself, the hardest part of the process has been keeping all the colors strong, vibrant and in accordance with each other. I’ve really loved the color of the light today, bright but with some clouds that have worked as a filter, accentuating the colors as only late August sun can do…….
I have been painting in my studio today………
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