Three Studies, One Size

Jun 9

Do blank canvases intimidate you? Depending on the size and the deadline they can emanate an ominous brooding in my world, and I tend to want to just squirt them with something to knock them down a notch. Today, rather than squirt paint, I grabbed my art journal and three smaller, much smaller (4" by 8"), canvases along with a few reference photos and sketched some ideas out. What you see here are the three studies, each completed in about 20 min because I didn't want to over think the process.

What I gained from these three is that although the color palette in my journal works well there, for my larger canvas I want to go lighter, much lighter. In fact, as much as I like elements of these three small pieces, they make me want to grab the gesso and ghost them out. That tells me that the direction of my larger piece will go lighter. I will still use my charcoal and graphite, but I hope to use tints of color rather than pure pigment.