A full day working on three painting designs. I can waiver between too much perfectionism, which stops all work, and just doing everything, which can risk repetition or low quality work - though generally trying everything tends to produce the best work anyway. Now I'm working on many painting designs but will only finally settle on and trace over the ones I'm happy with. If in doubt and without any to compete with, I can do them all, but a painting is a big investment in time, effort and resources.
My method now is to expand the idea sketch to life size, print out sections on A4 sheets then trace the enlarged (very rough) idea to paper of the final size. Then this is worked over, keeping the layout and composition, but adding more detail or refining objects and textures for realism.
The key thing is the feeling from the original idea, which is sometimes so strong. The technique evolved because some ideas had a much stronger feeling than the final painting, yet, the increased detail often improves them too. Perhaps an ultimate solution is to paint the idea directly not use sketches at all, but the downside here is beauty and finish of the image because an idea may require changes (which would easily muddy up paint) or sometimes radical changes - at first, there no knowing what colour anything is supposed to be, so how can it be painted from the outset?
Still, I like this method. The 'Toad' series was painted in this way. When I tried it for the 'Fly in Amber' painting, I ended up duplicating that painting as an idea, so it became a full colour, full size, idea sketch - which is a bit heavy in time and resources.
I can see that Picasso essentially adopted this second method, but his paintings became solid, rather thick and rather crude in finish as a result. If, for example, he later copied his own work, it certianly would have looked more beautiful - but would that beauty retain the same feeling? Generally, I think it probably would - but the best way to be sure is plan it all in detail first...
Today I drew out 'Mama Mia Here I Go Again' and 'Spree Killer', these are largely complete in design now, but I'll need a few days to be sure, days during which I'll work on others. I've sized the paper and prepared the surface for 'Moon Over Shakespeare' too.
I've listened to Tales of Mystery and Imagination by The Alan Parsons Project, a great album, much better than the other one of theirs I have (Turn of a Friendly Card). I've probably said this already. I played electric guitar to the Doctor Tarr track. I must finish the Nightfood album. I wrote a new song last night, Only The Lonelier, but I might save that for a new album. Nightfood needs one track, no more, and something specific.
