In-progress "New Year's Day"

On New Year's Day I posted a Happy New Year painting. After that, I made a cup of mocha, and with my journal in hand I settled in at the dining room table to ponder the new year. I took a photo of the moment, planning to print it and insert it into my handwritten journal but then decided to paint the scene instead. I'm working on it and am posting the painting-in-progress. I'm working back to front now so the mid and foreground are next.

1-27-2020 See the finished painting here

The block-in

Making Progress

Color choices

Value check

Second Trio Step Two

Here they are again, this time with the darkest value added. I noticed when working with interactive acrylics that sometimes in my enthusiasm, I accidentally lifted off too much value so today I applied varying amounts of acrylic Lamp Black, NOT interactive. And, to keep it loose, I used a rubber spatula instead of a brush.

a little preparation

Continuing from yesterday...
As I started to work on the three little acrylic foundations I posted yesterday it occurred to me that it would be easier to reformat the reference photo from the vertical format to a square. Then, once I started playing with the photo - which, by the way, I am amazed I could actually find in my computer - I couldn't help looking at the composition and values so I used PhotoShop to change the focus of the light to keep it more in the middle. Below is the adjusted reference photo that I will be working from.

next three acrylics

The next three acrylic experiments are on the easel. Color is arbitrary - brushfulls of paint applied to white Ampersand Gessobord while I was cleaning my acrylic palette. I lifted color off using a paper towel and/or brushes. Also, I misted the first one with water and let it run. These three are starting out as the same scene using a reference photo from September 2011- see my sketchbook entry below. The original painting from this photo shoot of the Cedar River was used as an Art Journal Blog post called The value of value.