The Senator's Painting - Work in Progress

As some of you may know, I'm currently working on a large commissioned painting for a United States Senator based on the Intermission 2 painting I finished last summer, which - at 100x100cm - was the largest piece I'd ever worked on. You can see the original Intermission painting here: Intermission 2 (this piece has now sold).

It's a real challenge to work on such a large scale when most of my work on canvas is fairly small - in comparison to this anyway! It is certainly much more physically demanding - I'm finding that my arm gets very tired and I can end up with a sore neck and shoulder at the end of the day if I'm not careful, so I have to take regular breaks. But it's also incredibly exciting to create pieces with such presence, and my work seems to successfully translate to a large scale. I'm going to make sure that I work on more big canvases this year, in order to push myself out of my comfort zone...and I hope to have a great deal of fun doing so!

Anyway, back to the Senator's painting. The reason I'm posting progress shots of this piece here on the blog is that I'd like to share my working process with you. I always find it fascinating to watch how other artists work and how their paintings gradually develop from blank canvas to finished piece, so I hope that you'll enjoy seeing this painting evolve.

The painting is on a 100x70cm deep-edge canvas.
In this first progress shot, I've finished the textured foreground and applied the first layer of paint to the sky. I tend to work in thin layers from dark to light, so the foreground started out as a layer of textured black paint applied with a palette knife. This was left to dry, after which several successive layers of muted violet-grey paint were applied on top of the original textured layer. Each layer of paint is slightly lighter the the one beneath it, with the previous shades allowed to show through slightly, giving depth to the piece.

In this shot I'm working on the sky, applying several thin layers of paint from dark to light until I reach the desired shade. The painting always looks pretty messy at this stage!

At this stage the foreground is finished, but I'll need to apply at least two more layers of paint to the sky before I'm happy with it. The dark strip you can see in the middle of the painting is where all of the intricate detail will eventually be.

I still have much to do on this piece and I'll be working on it a lot over the next few days, so I hope you'll come back to see how I'm getting on!

Artwork & photographs © Natasha Newton 2010

Comments

[pilarcat]

I love seeing artist's working process. Thanks for sharing and good luck for this job. I know it will come out very great :-D

[Leon Milo]

All the stages are beautiful and interesting. I honestly think that you could stop at any point and it would be so!
xx {O}
ps. You got paint on your hands. :P

[Angie Rea]

I look forward to seeing this progress!

[evan]

There used to be a few magazines that followed artists as they created "How" & "Step by Step", but they sort of devolved into computer centric design magazines..."American Artist" still have a step by step...an artist's process is interesting just to see how much goes into a piece...the days when grass is green, water is blue, and the sky depended on how many crayons you had in your box (you might have sky blue) are over.

[Katherine Herriman]

Hi Natasha, thanks for sharing your process! I'm teaching myself how to paint and I'm curious -- you mention you use thin layers of paint -- if you don't mind me asking, how do you thin your paint? Do you use glazing or some other medium, water or fluid acrylics, or is it all in the way you apply it?

Thanks again, for posting about your process -- they're always my favourite type of posts by artists.

[Natasha Newton]

Hi Katherine,

I'm finally getting around to answering your question - sorry for the delay!

If I need to thin my acrylic paints I usually do so with water. Other than that I tend to use a "dry brush" technique (at least, I think that's what it's called!), and gently apply the paint layer by layer.

Hope that makes sense! :)

Natasha x