The New Year seems like a good time to write about STARTS. Specifically, those first steps that constitute a start on a painting. Approaching a blank canvas can be intimidating--even terrifying! Making those very first marks is an important moment. Sometimes I even begin by painting over an old painting, so I have something to "work against", as you see directly below.
What happens at the start? It is pure magic! You are laying in shapes and forming the composition. You can see the picture coming to life on a blank slate. It happens very quickly, with every stroke serving as as an overture to the next. The future of the painting is nothing but possibilities--nothing has gone wrong yet! These are moments of high excitement, no question.
I experiment with different methods of starting. Sometimes I use a fine brush to draw with lines. Other times I tone the entire canvas with a thin dark paint (thinned with mineral spirits), and then rub it off to create an underpainting. I also experiment with toning the canvas different hues, as you can see from these photos.
In any approach, a good start makes makes me excited about the future of the painting. On the other hand, a bad start is very hard to overcome, and in my case usually means that the entire painting will be a big struggle, probably not ending well. If you make a bad start, you fare better to simply wipe it off, and make a whole new start. Thank goodness that the oil painting process makes that entirely possible!
I'm illustrating this post with examples of some "starts". A few of the finished paintings are already up on my website, for the curious: https://www.lesleypowellart.com
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