Painting Keys 1: Make the first decisions

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead. (Robert Brault)

How an idea becomes a painting:

Outside the studio window, Autumn is rapidly changing from a few bright accents to full on color to, now, just a few scarlet and yellow leaves among the browns and grays. November is closing in! Time to paint a stand of maples outside my window. 

I had prepared a linen board, set it up in just the right spot on my easel, and sketched in an structural layout for the central tree in Transparent Earth Red (from Gamblin), thinned quite a bit with mineral spirits. This is the only part of the painting where mineral spirits are still used. I have become sensitive to them after all these years. 

I keep it loose here so I don't feel trapped in this idea, but I have a place to start. If I can get this far on a painting, I can take it another step.

These two walked into my view a posed for awhile.

This is something that I'm experimenting with at the moment. My glass palette shown here is set up with colors along the sides and top. Just a few colors. With a palette knife,  I mix quite a few of the colors I plan to use and lay them out side by side. This way, it's possible to see how they look in context, and I can tell if the values are going to be interesting or strong enough. Less mixing on the painting itself is the goal here. What often happens is a need to continue to mix more variety of color notes after I start in painting with the brushes, but the time spent working out a base set of mixed colors on the palette seems to keep the painting fresher. Fresher is better, no?

       

The first colors going on the linen with an additional tree trunk on the right to create another layer in that area. I use many brushes here, big ones when possible. I have been using Gambin Solvent Free Gel as a medium, or a little stand oil. I mostly just wipe the brushes on a cloth and occasionally clean them with safflower oil from the grocery store. Works great and maintains a proper paint film.

After this stage, I kept adding and changing colors and created a road behind the trees and some background color, and a far off sky layer.
 

Eventually, there was color everywhere, and the idea for this painting, although it was still there, was in danger of being lost in the tapestry of color and with the tendency to lose the value pattern. Time to let it marinate for awhile. I am off to get a cup of coffee and think about what I can do next on this painting. 
The wild turkeys have moved off to better eats at the neighbors.  

I am just happy that I got this started while the leaves are still attached to the trees!

More on this next week.