From what I know and was taught, the ideal process of painting starts with a drawing. Then the artist goes to create a sort of quick, maybe small scale painting. The next step is scaling to something full-sized.

So this post is kind of two-thirds of that process.

Above is the initial sketch before painting. I just knocked it out, pencil on paper.

So this is first pass at the painting part of it. The work is the small scale sort.

So while it looks kind of o.k. from a quick sketch perspective, I had set up a few opportunities to try different things.

This is the second stab at the same subject. I’m thinking this is more aligned with where I’d like to be with the process, although detail was sacrificed a bit in the process. I’m sure that’s really do to the size of brushes used in relationship to the size of the painting.

It’s been a while since I’ve painted and since there’s this gap for me, this is as good a time as any to pull out the oil rig. So the tough part for me with oils is the drying time. My studio area hasn’t had a good way to accommodate the week-ish time before you can really be sure the paint is set enough to handle.

I think I now have a way to take care of this issue, so maybe transition back to oils. I do like the way oil paint feels/operates over acrylic despite how close acrylic can get to approximate oil performance and handling.