Obviously, I start with a drawing, USUALLY, what I do is draw whatever it is I'm about to paint and THEN map out the lights and darks.
This time I was really rusty, I didn't properly draw myself or map out he darks so I ended up with this. It felt flat and sat in my room for a solid month before I decided to hop back on it.
THIS is usually what I do before I start getting too far into the painting, I just make sure the drawing is right and try and get a good feel for where the darks and lights are. In this case I just drew over what I had done before, it also kind of helps for me to be able to paint on an already painted or colored surface, it helps to place the lights and darks and find the midtones......
I start to fill in what I've drawn out. I usually mix 3 or 4 colors ranging broadly in tone. From here I can see what's working and whats not and make decisions about where I need to redraw, change tone/color or completely fix things.
This is the final product. Basically I start to take the broad basic shapes of the tones and hone in on the smaller detailed areas as I go. Like I said, I learned this process from George Nick at MassArt, it really, really works. They take a pretty long time (this one was maybe 5-6 hours in the end?) and A LOT of the time I end up redrawing/painting entire segments that aren't working.... but it's pretty satisfying once you get what you're looking for. Thanks for looking!OH! I forgot to mention one major detail! I don't use brushes for this, only palette knives...
