Sara

After a total of 47 hours of work over 23 days I’m done with this painting. I ended up naming it Sara after the model’s name from New Masters Academy.

I wasn’t feeling well all day today but I was able to accomplish two hours of painting a leg and foot anyway. Unfortunately I missed my workout today.

Early morning painting session today and I worked on the thigh and foot. I can smell the end of this painting and I’m happier with it daily.

I feel as if I’m getting closer to finished after this session. I’m thinking the painting may be a bit overworked though.

I’ve finished up the second major layer of underpainting for the whole figure now I’m working on super subtle colors and values for the final layer.

Well, I made it look like I got a lot done by blocking in the rest of the background. But this slow progress is really testing my painting stamina.

I’m running a day behind on my posts, so I’m making this one very short. Not much to write about, still making slow progress on this same painting.

After years of doing art daily it has become a deeply ingrained daily habit. And because I do it everyday I’ve noticed that distraction doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.

There are times when it is best to recognize my mood and deal with it by taking a day to relax. Of course I still did some painting, I just shortened it today.

I spent the whole two hour session painting an arm in shadow, and not even the entire arm. It was difficult to get right.

At the 14th session for this painting I’m finding that time flies when I’m working. I’m getting into the good parts and having a great time painting.

As I look back at many days worth of work on this painting I have a fear of too much rendering.

I’ve started the finishing strokes on this painting and the progress is going very slowly.

This painting is taking even longer than I previously thought but I have the first layer done.

I accept that I lose focus every now and then. So, in order to not screw up to bad I just move to the easy parts.

It seems like every painting has an awkward stage. It’s that stage where everything doesn’t look quite right and you don’t know if it’s going to go bad or get better.

At my current rate with the slow block-in this painting is going to take much longer than my previous paintings. I’m okay with that.

I have a plan and I’m working slowly and deliberately. I even got out my anatomy book and did some research while drawing today.

After after a lot of thought on this current painting I decided on starting over again. But this time I’m putting much more care into the preparation of my canvas.

I feel like I’m doing a lot of work but going nowhere fast. It’s been a while since I’ve been confused like this but I know how to deal with it.

I’m having some trouble with my canvas during this rough block-in. For some reason the texture is much more rough than it should be.

The name of the game here is to get the basic values and colors established while covering the gesso.

Now I’m getting kind of nervous, I haven’t done a figure painting this big in over 10 years. I’m bound to learn something!

I spent a lot of time finding my next figure to paint, I even re-subscribed to New Masters Academy. But, after spending lots of time on the drawing I need a bigger canvas.