The Making of Pilgrimage

To me, painting feels a lot like pulling something from a dream. It starts off very vague and murky. At first, you might just have the slightest flash behind your eyes of what you want to make. Lights here, darks there. The base image is a cloudy prerequisite to your main idea. It is easy to give up at this point because your image still looks nothing like you want it too. It is now time to power through and fine tune the image. The dream becomes more vivid.

The dream has structure now. Things are becoming clearer and clearer like a lens is being adjusted into focus. Most of my time goes towards the small details, the little bits here and there that make a boring section interesting. I'll add a rusty patch here and a reflection there. Make the scene look like it has a history and you are looking at the aftermath.

The final stage is the hardest. This is where you must decide when the scene is complete. There is no worse feeling than overworking a project and ruining hours of hard work. You need to find the balance between detail and vagueness. Some things should be left for the viewers imagination to fill in. When ending a piece bring out and define your lightest lights and your darkest darks. Give the scene contrast and enough focal points to keep it interesting. For example I almost didn't put the animals in the scene but I felt like it was still missing something. It's a gamble adding something at the end. It can be devastating, or it can give you a sense of completion and you can put down your brush and walk away.

Let me know what you guys think. I might do more of these The Making of posts.