New Painting

The Figure Drawing Session

Oil on canvas, 22"x24" 

I finished this painting today.  This was a fun one to do.  It started during a figure drawing session, with what was initially just an oil sketch, but things were clicking with it.  So I continued to work on it, refining, changing, adding, and subtracting.  Finally it's done.

Here's what it looked like earlier.  During the initial session, I worked on the figure and roughly sketched in the couch.  The next day, rather than wipe everything out, I laid in the initial red of the couch and added the easel and light.  At this point I knew where it was going.  The next steps were to bring some more depth to the couch and figure, and to revise the easel since the angles were all wrong.  It took two tries to get the position of the easel right.  Then I needed to add some more things that said "artist studio", so I added the rug, the jar of paint brushes, and the drawings on the floor and wall.   The lighting also needed to be adjusted so that it was clearly a spotlight on the figure.  Finally, I went around the picture to bring everything up to snuff: refine the figure and couch (again), rework the easel and light, and minor touchups all over.

This is the first real painting I've done in over two years and it feels good!