32 to go

I really love thumbnail number 4 but just as one can rely too heavily on a reference photo, getting determined to duplicate a thumbnail can be a problem too. I finally just put the thumbnail out of sight and let the painting go in another direction. "Hometown Memory," 13 x 13 inches, on raspberry ground.

Speaking of memory: artist Loriann Signori has been posting insights about memory painting for many weeks. If you want to go deeply into this subject, visit her blog.

I thought you might like to see the thumbnail I referred to. I may use it again for a painting on a different color ground.

33 to go

This painting started out based on the third thumbnail from left, top row, on the sheet of 35 but it stayed on my easel in the oil-wash foundation stage for days because the composition made me wince each time I looked at it. When I went back to work on this piece, I thought about how much my hometown has changed since I lived there and what it is that still binds me to the area. One fondness is the sound of the train whistle of my childhood that I heard again as I was shooting the reference photos for this series. I kept that sound in my mind as I painted this one, "Hometown Heartstrings," 14 x 14 inches, pastel on paper.

jump-start

I think the 35 thumbnails did the trick to jump-start my work for the new year. This is the oil-wash foundation for my first painting of the Hometown Marshland series. It is based upon the very first thumbnail in a previous post. I like this very much because of the spontaneity and am SO tempted to leave it as it is and call it an oil painting. But, the point of my bright idea was to take a reference photo, paint a watercolor thumbnail using the photo as a guide, and move on through the process to complete a pastel painting. My goal for the finished painting will be to keep the looseness but to add enough detail to draw the viewer into the story behind the scene.

My hometown is Auburn, Washington. I spent my first 21 years there with my family, in a little house built by my father near the railroad tracks. When I was shooting the photos for this series, I could hear train whistles in the distance...music to my ears and soul.