It has been a few weeks since I have posted to my blog and boy, have I missed the blogging community!  I was in a car accident about three weeks ago and I am just now recovering enough to feel up to writing a post.  I was hit by a car that ran a red light.  I have to say, the past few weeks have been awful.

Of course, the worst part is I damaged the right side of my body and I am right-handed and I have not been able to stand and paint at my easel.  My physical therapist has been wonderful and I am starting to feel much better and a lot less sore and I finally see a light at the end of the tunnel!

So not being able to paint.., I thought I would share my creative process on the last painting I created….sorry about the picture quality they are straight out of my camera with no cropping, touch ups or my usual watermark.

Here is the sketch of the painting.  For this painting I decided to do a quick outline sketch the same size of the painting, mainly for placement of the cottage and the mountains in the background.  This way I could hang my sketch right next to my canvas as I paint.  I usually sketch in my sketchbook and then use it as a reference while I sketch in charcoal on my canvas.  And sometimes I enlarge my sketch from my sketchbook so I can see the details I want to paint.  I think I like this process better.

This is the background that I painted over a gallery wrapped canvas that I had painted two coats of white gesso.

Now I have painted the mountains and moved forward and  started to block in the trees and the cottage as well as the background colors and the meadow as well as placing the stepping-stone locations.   My painting process is from the back to the front and in this painting I was trying to be conscious of creating depth by creating grayed and lighter planes in the background (mountains) and then creating my focal point (cottage) in the mid front range with the flowers in the foreground.

I love purple and green, so in this painting I used a lot of purple shades in my under-painting and shadow areas.

More details added and it is starting to look like I had imagined.  I just need to add more details, highlights and deeper shadows.

Here is the final painting… Hmmm….since it is still sitting on my easel while I have been recovering, I have been thinking of adding a few things to the painting. (I haven’t put a final glaze on it yet.)

Since I was thinking of my childhood when I was painting this piece, I started thinking I would add two little girls in the meadow.  Here is a sketch of two little girls that I am thinking of placing in the left side foreground of the meadow, I was looking at a picture of my sister and I when we were kids when I did the sketch.  I am also thinking it needs more depth to the tree line and some movement by adding in more impressionistic brush strokes.

What do you think?  Should I keep adding or do you think I should just keep the painting as it is?

I look forward to checking out everyone’s blog posts and catching up with what you have all been doing.  Feel free to leave me a comment and let me know how your summer is going.

Have a wonderful creative day, Janell