I have a group of reference photos from the summer that I've been mulling over and struggling with for a while. I love the concept, but something about every single photo (and combination of photos) doesn't feel right. Every time I've sketched a thumbnail, I've stopped after just a couple minutes, unfinished. I decided to try to figure out what bugs me about the photos and whether there's anything I can do to fix it. Is it the indirect lighting? Is it the composition? Or am I just trying to hard to paint a more narrative concept, trying to squeeze myself into a box that just doesn't fit me? I don't think any of those things, by itself, is the problem...
I sketched out a couple of ideas and played with the hair, background, and dress. I think what what had been bugging was the lack of movement, which I fixed with some changes to the model's hair and dress. I also shifted the background around, and cropped the composition more closely than I had originally been planning.
It still doesn't exactly light me up with excitement. For one thing, in the original reference photos, the model is standing in an overgrown garden of Hostas. Which is beautiful. And also a lot of leaves. I don't want to paint all those leaves. So I think for this to work at all for me, I need to try a little bit of a different style. Maybe the way to shake off whatever else is bothering me is to depart from a literal interpretation. So I decided to do the final drawing on 140lb cold press paper (I normally use 300lb, which is rougher). I also drew more loosely and intend to just let pencil lines show, if they show under paint. I'm considering doing the background in charcoal and only painting the figure, or the skin and hair. I'm also thinking about focusing more on value and blocking in shapes. We'll see. Maybe I'll end up abandoning this one, but I don't want to. I think it'll be a good exercise, if nothing else, and I want to see what I can come up with.
