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Here’s what my space was looking like part way through December. It seems as though painting feeds on itself, or it has for me recently. This time around I had more severe failures and what I hope are more coherent successes. I’ve been trying new colors on my palette, and testing various pigments. Not reflected here are the numerous sketchbook images I’ve been doing. I’ve been reading voraciously anything I can find on the subject of painting in general and watercolor in particular. More details and images after the jump!

Working on such tiny images has made me jump up to larger images at last, where I can experiment more with composition and color. This also means more planning, which I’m still getting used to. In some ways I’ve been planning unconsciously – I seem to visit the same types of subjects and compositions over and over again. In some cases I’ll find a resemblance to something I’ve seen recently in the throwaway sketch I’ve just done.

I think larger sizes also make me a bit slower in execution, fussing more about details and being perhaps more patient when waiting for layers to dry. Strangely, I find I prefer the physical act of painting to attempting the same task digitally. I’d rather redo than undo. I get twice the paintings that way! There is also something refreshing about the tangibility of it all.

It also means that digitizing is a separate step, fraught with color errors and other artifacts. Somehow, I’m OK with this. I’ve started posting selected images from the tinies at Deviant Art. The DA community may be the kindest, gentlest way to get honest feedback on your work, I recommend them highly.