I’ve been asked about my painting, How do you do it?” My only answer is, it’s easy, peasy. Because for me it is. Of course, if you consider that, if you’ve been practicing something for almost thirty-five years, you get to be proficient at it. I’ve certainly had to learn quite a bit about what I do.
When I first started painting in this style, I drew everything out in pencil. I didn’t trust myself to put a brush down on canvas and know which way to go next. As for my little people, I have definitely come a long way.
As you can see below, yes, I paint them naked first. Shock! Horror! I found early on, painting little pants and attaching shirts and plugging heads and arms into them just didn’t look right. I remember one painting I did many years ago that had an entire school yard of children playing. I was showing it to a client at the gallery where I was showing and as we were looking at it on the wall, I was very embarrassed to see an empty pair of pants running down the hill at the back.
The client was very understanding and did buy the painting. I had to take it back home to my studio and plug in the missing child. From there I decided there must be a better way. I started painting the whole person in first, get the body language going and then, dress them. And that how I still do it.
So, here is my latest painting, the first of the new year. It’s called “Butterfly Parade Too”. From start to finish.
After I do a background, I start with my little people, with arms and legs going in the right directions.
Then, working back to front, I put on , in this case, their costume wings, and then, faces, and their hair.
I detail their costumes next. Then clothing and shoes, pants and dresses, whatever will be on top of the wings.
Then last, the rest of the details. The buttons and bows and ribbons. Then the birds, dogs, odds and ends, that I feel, make the painting come to life.
So for me painting is easy. It’s the web page that is hard!
