New Painting process part 1

 Been a long time - but I will try using this blog again occasionally - this time at the request of some new painting students that were asking about my personal process... Here's a few process photos from recent paintings - beginning with a Utah-based work.

The process here began with a 3x4' raw canvas onto which I projected my photo and sketched in a few of the basic shapes. From there I wet most of the raw canvas and poured/painted very thin washes of acrylic paint into the cotton. This stage works similar to a watercolor as the paint diffuses and stains the raw canvas.

 From there, I sealed the absorbent canvas with many layers of clear gesso and self-leveling clear gel (by Golden).  After it is adequately sealed, I begin building up the acrylic with layers of glazed paint.

After those stages, I switched to oil paint to soften some edges and lay in big tones (mostly blues/grays). The photo below may not be the best representation of the finished work but gives you an idea:

The work on the easel right now is also inspired by the desert as well as a previous work (the tree painting above titled "Lumen Vitae", Acrylic on Canvas, 42x60"). This painting focuses on one of my favorite plants: desert sage.


This painting process is more direct - again starting with simple outlines of the forms, I am laying in a lot of the larger background shapes first:

From there I'm building up the acrylic on the sage in the foreground. This photo shows the daylight coming through the linen in my studio. The process from here will continue filling in the larger shapes and proceed to layer more glazed paint to pronounce the warm glow of the setting sun.