new to do list

• put something into each of the blue panels behind the flowers
• adjust the curvature of the imagery on the vase near the roses
• warmer red in the Sweet Williams on the left
• add indication of the chrysanthemum on far left
• pale the top of the cloth, and add elements of a bluer green (mixed warm/cool)
• start messing around with the settled cloth elements — for color, as your mood instructs
• fix that longer leaf on right (closer to the study)
• more articulation in the white what’s-their-names flowers at top
• figure out what patterns are sitting on the top of the hill
• some time or other might want to do a couple drapery drawings … just because

Giving my brain some instructions.

Now, make it so.

  (As Star Trek fans will understand.)

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not my flower

The tulip that I’ve decided to keep inside the picture is not my tulip.  I don’t know where it came from.  I found it while doing an image search on, I think, Jan van Huysum.  It resembles his flowers but probably isn’t his tulip study.

Anyway, I stole it.  Like the figs (Snyder’s figs, different painting).

beginnings

The current painting began TWO YEARS ago!  Hard to believe.  It began with this drawing, a drawing that I never finished.

Well, I’m pursuing that thought now even without that drawing!

 

not one painting, many

Every part of the painting can teach you something.  This morning I’m learning to think like the pattern maker.

Working on a large complex painting, one needs to break things into parts.  It’s not just one painting: it’s many paintings stitched together.  Each section becomes almost a separate painting to me — I am learning more and more to do this — and I strive to focus on that part and to see the possibilities that it holds within it.

Then one stands back to look at the whole thing.  The introduction of these new parts has to jibe with the rest.  It’s a back and forth.

I’m letting Brian Tracy coach me this morning.  He writes, “The bigger your goal and the more intensely you desire it, the more likely you will be to exert your powers of self-discipline and will-power, and the more capable you will be of making yourself do the things that you need to do to get where you want to go.” (p 140, Maximum Achievement)

I must say, the color blue is a good coach too.  The color blue always makes me want to do stuff.