Theory of Evolution

Every painter has his/her own process. Mine is fairly standard. Start with an inspiration, make drawings from it, follow or abandon “reality,” embellishing where desired, leaving out or taking things that do, or don’t, matter. At top is the initial drawing for a painting under way. Because I like combining subject matter in a way that creates realistic, but somehow not-possible, architectured landscapes, the barn in this painting sits on a hill (as it does in life), behind which is the ocean (which, in reality, it is not).

Below is the first block in of the drawing, establishing shadows and highlights, base colors, and general composition. I roughly brushed in the composition, deciding during that stage not to paint the hills in the background, as replacing it with the ocean seemed to make it more interesting. The colors will be modified from this stage (not sure how, yet).