Taxes and Reworks

This week I've been doing tax preparation so not much painting but the last four pastels have been reworks of old paintings. The color palette of the new painting is much the same as the old one but that's about it. Here are four examples of work from 2009 and how I repainted them earlier this month.

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The ghost and the finished painting

Many of my paintings are reworks. To start with a ghost image is my favorite thing to do. This one was an abstract painting from 2009. The paper is Wallis. I brushed it off, hosed it off and turned it upside down to begin. I set my old iPhone on a tripod beside me and began to make a video of the process of re painting this one. After a couple minutes I heard a beep and the iPhone (poor old thing) was out of memory. So, no video but below is the finished painting.

Wild Cherries, pastel, 11.25 x 11 inches

Chain of Events with video

This is Chain of Events, pastel, 11 x 11 inches. It was painted over the ghost image of a painting of the same name from 2009.  Here is a short video showing part of the process.

Has this happened to you?

My goal is to paint with abandon - that means without inhibition or restraint. When I am able to do this, creativity flows. I'm not painting for anyone else, not painting with a goal in mind, just painting. During this time I am painting from the heart and I can't wait to get to the easel to see what happens. Are these scenes that I have in my memory? How did they get there?  This morning I came across a video that relates to this and is very interesting to me. Take a look at this.

From the Heart series: Woodland Path, pastel, 13 x 12.5 inches

LOVE the iPhone 8 camera!

Around the middle of December I posted images of three 6x6 oils I thought were done. They weren't. I painted on each of them again and now they really are done because I varnished them today. 

I also took photos with my new iPhone 8 instead of the Panasonic Lumix FZ35 camera I have been using for years for the high resolution shots I need. The resolution of the iPhone 8 is great and the color is soooo much better than my Panasonic.

I have always spent a lot of time adjusting the color to make sure what you see is what you get. It was time consuming. But today, I took a photo of one of these outdoors and all I had to do was lighten it to make the color perfect (I always shoot my photos with a Kodak color bar). The other two I shot at the easel under a mixture of warm and cool lights and the final photo required very little tweaking for correct color. I'm so happy! So, here they are again.

Last Dahlias, oil, 6x6 inches

Peony, oil, 6x6 inches

Begonia, oil, 6x6 inches

Paintings from the Heart #1

At the beginning of each year I clean out my file cabinets, clean out my flat files and look around the Studio for paintings that aren't my best. First up this year is an 18x24 inch pastel scene of our lake. I loved parts of it but you know how those precious areas convince you to call it done and frame it. Other areas were not great so it needed to go. I never throw paintings away, I just rework them.

The paper is LaCarte so I can't wash it off. I took it outdoors and brushed it off then brushed more off in the studio and vacuumed it.

This is the ghost of the old painting, turned upside down.

I'm not using a reference photo. Instead, I'm letting the ghost image suggest a scene to me. I'll call this reworked series "Paintings from the Heart" because they are imagined or remembered. Paintings from the heart sounds better than paintings from my brain.

A few more minutes of painting brings it to this. In total, this is about 30 minutes of painting. Keep it fast, simple, spontaneous. Painting with abandon.

From the Heart: River, pastel, 14 x 24 inches ©2018 Barbara Benedetti Newton

While I'm on the subject of reworked paintings, following is a link to a page of reworks. The last post was years ago.   Link to reworked paintings