Progress!

 The peonies in my little garden have flowered, and I could not resist taking a vase of them to the studio to paint. The bloom season is very short--but a painting lasts forever!  I thought it might be fun to share a few photos showing how the painting materialized.

Top shot:  I "blocked in" the big shapes.  At this first step, the most important things to me are (1) getting the big shapes in approximately the right place on the canvas, and (2) paying attention to which shapes are in light and which are in shadow.  The shadow shapes are toned in a fairly deep blue-ish color. If I'm not excited by what I'm seeing at this point, I don't proceed.

Next step:  I paint the background.  As painting instructors say, one should "paint the SPACE around the thing", rather than painting the thing itself.  Getting the color down accurately for the area behind the flowers tells the viewer where the flowers are located in space.  It makes the painting believable.  Plus, notice how the painting almost seems to paint itself once this is done.  Sometimes I wish I could stop here and let my mind entertain all the possibilities, without having to commit to any one of them.

Third step:  Trying not to mess up the magic of the underpainting.  This is the hard part: keeping room for the imagination, and deciding which parts are important to emphasize.  It's a battle between the general and the specific.  I definitely don't want to draw each petal!

Fourth:  Stopping point.  I've worked far enough through the prior steps to stop for a while.  I'll let it sit for an hour or two, or a day or two, and see whether it feels finished.  The key from here on out is to avoid the temptation to fiddle and fuss so much that the freshness is destroyed.  Wish me luck!