I’ve finally managed to wrap up a commission that I’ve been rather a slave to for the past three months.  I’m proud of the finished piece.  Like a lot of commissioned works it’s not something I’d have done for myself as studio work.  But it’s a good piece of work.  A piece that has merit as a step in a new direction for my process.

During the process of creating this piece and another one recently I began working from multiple sources simultaneously.  In the past I’d relied on creating composite images if my source lacked the elements I wanted for the composition.  At some point I guess it became more trouble than it was worth and I just started picking up the photos and taking out the elements I wanted mentally and putting them into the piece.  From that standpoint I can move things around or change their scale at will.  I feel like it frees me up.  As a result my work has become a bit more illustrative.  More like creating a scene instead of reproducing a source image.  I like it.

In the interest of keeping myself interested in painting I’ve been dabbling with some other ideas.  I painted this one in the course of a handful of sessions while waiting for paint to dry on the others in progress.  It’s not very large.  Only 16″x20″, but I think I’d like to continue in this vein on a larger scale.  We’ll see.  I’m hoping to have more time for studio work in the very near future.

Cheers,

R