How Long Does It Take to Do a Painting?
Finally having pretty much cleared the decks of other major and necessary though minor projects and tasks, I spent yesterday painting! When I first realized I had a real hankering to make my next acrylic on canvas painting one of pansies, I had to figure out what size and shape it seemed like it should be and then get a canvas. The vision in my mind was horizontal, dramatically longer than tall, so I went to my favorite art supply store, Plaza Arts in Bethesda, and rounded up a 10 by 20 incher that felt just right. I got to do this before we went to the cabin, so I knew when we got back that I could get started whenever everything else fell in line.
Next, after we got back, I had to sort through my tons of photos to see what pictures I already had that I could use for references for colors, shapes, composition, etc., and make preliminary decisions about those things. This took several hours, since I have a lot of photos and all my flower photos are not in one spot. I also had kept my eyes open while we were at the cabin for more pansies to shoot and had gotten that new roll developed. And, since I had decided to hone in on pansies for the next painting, I also studied them closely in person whenever I saw them in convenient locations.
Sometimes a photo will give me my compositional idea. However, this time no photo showed me a compelling composition - or represented the incipient vision I had in my head - so I had to play around with sketching different ideas until I landed on the one that moved me. Again, this took a few hours. As with the clematis painting, it seemed I wanted to paint seven little pansies, faces front and forward. Once I had that figured out, I was able to transfer my draft composition onto the canvas with charcoal and make adjustments to it based on the larger size and additional idiosyncractic considerations that now came into play. Again as with the clematis, I realized that I wanted a few different colors of pansies, not all the same or even just a couple, so I had to make preliminary decisions about colors and placement, based on color considerations and theory. With all of that finally done by yesterday, I wiped off most of the charcoal, except for a faint line, laid out my palette, got my brushes and water, sketched in and modified the underdrawing with burnt sienna and then, finally, started actually putting on colors.
I painted myself silly for most of the day. I have a few more hours to go, but on the whole I would say that at this point it's almost done. I'm actually feeling too tired to work on it today as I also did a small watercolor collage on Monday and started making sketches for another possible painting last night. But people often ask me "How long did that take you?" I find it almost impossible to answer because it seems like maybe, in the end, the actual painting part takes less than what one might imagine, though the way I paint it is still not inconsiderable, and every painting requires so much more unseen and almost incalculable thought and labor. And I'm thinking people might think there should be some correlation between the amount of actual just physical painting time a painting takes and what an artist might charge. And of course, there is and must be SOME relationship. But in the end, I think I agree with the artist who said (and I changed this a little, try to guess how), "An artist is not paid for her labor, but for her vision."
Next, after we got back, I had to sort through my tons of photos to see what pictures I already had that I could use for references for colors, shapes, composition, etc., and make preliminary decisions about those things. This took several hours, since I have a lot of photos and all my flower photos are not in one spot. I also had kept my eyes open while we were at the cabin for more pansies to shoot and had gotten that new roll developed. And, since I had decided to hone in on pansies for the next painting, I also studied them closely in person whenever I saw them in convenient locations.
Sometimes a photo will give me my compositional idea. However, this time no photo showed me a compelling composition - or represented the incipient vision I had in my head - so I had to play around with sketching different ideas until I landed on the one that moved me. Again, this took a few hours. As with the clematis painting, it seemed I wanted to paint seven little pansies, faces front and forward. Once I had that figured out, I was able to transfer my draft composition onto the canvas with charcoal and make adjustments to it based on the larger size and additional idiosyncractic considerations that now came into play. Again as with the clematis, I realized that I wanted a few different colors of pansies, not all the same or even just a couple, so I had to make preliminary decisions about colors and placement, based on color considerations and theory. With all of that finally done by yesterday, I wiped off most of the charcoal, except for a faint line, laid out my palette, got my brushes and water, sketched in and modified the underdrawing with burnt sienna and then, finally, started actually putting on colors.
I painted myself silly for most of the day. I have a few more hours to go, but on the whole I would say that at this point it's almost done. I'm actually feeling too tired to work on it today as I also did a small watercolor collage on Monday and started making sketches for another possible painting last night. But people often ask me "How long did that take you?" I find it almost impossible to answer because it seems like maybe, in the end, the actual painting part takes less than what one might imagine, though the way I paint it is still not inconsiderable, and every painting requires so much more unseen and almost incalculable thought and labor. And I'm thinking people might think there should be some correlation between the amount of actual just physical painting time a painting takes and what an artist might charge. And of course, there is and must be SOME relationship. But in the end, I think I agree with the artist who said (and I changed this a little, try to guess how), "An artist is not paid for her labor, but for her vision."
posted by pat at 3:51 PM
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