My Painting Project: Setting It Up

I am now ready to start my painting. Thanks for helping me pick a photo for subject. I have decided to use pastels because the lack of mixing makes me work more loosely and the paintings often come out better.

It has occurred to me that a lot of you may not get the way a painting is made. Like most things it's a series of choices. The choices reveal a lot about the painter's personality, and sometimes convey agenda, conscious or unconsciously.

We've chosen the subject and I have chosen the pastel medium. Pastels are a low binder/low vehicle medium. They are very powdery - think loose eyeshadow. I like to work on paper with a tooth. The paper I use resembles sandpaper but is a paper that's been coated with a textured product. It leaves a sandpaper like finish.

My first problem comes with the paper size. Mt support board is smaller than the paper.  I could just tape it down but instead I found a piece of cardboard that with the support behind it will be strong enough. Then I realized the paper and the photo did not share aspect ratio.  Below you can see where I have set up the paper on the cardboard and attached that to the rigid support.  I marked the entirety off with tape to delineate the area matching the approximate aspect ratio. The two areas on either side I can use to check the pastel color and value (lightness/darkness of a particular color; sort of a greyscale for color).

Wanting to Paint Again, What am I to do?

Public Domain Image via Wikipedia

Cupcake by Wayne Thiebaud Image via Wikipedia

It's like that old Marlene Dietrich song: Falling in love again what am I to do? Nothing left me to, can't help it. I miss having painting in my life and that makes me want to paint again.  I know I am not John Singer Sargent or Wayne Thiebaud who are both big favorites of mine.  Yes, I know I am not them but here I am needing that, feeling guilty that I have a studio I don't use.

I have [at least] three problems:

1. Without a lot of practice I will suck at.  I used to work every day, four to six hours at a time. It is not entirely back to square one but I will have to learn to see like a painter again.
2. I have run out of images I want to paint; everything seems trite, a field, a tree, a house, people a bowl of fruit.  Does the world need more painted bowls of fruit?
3. Blogging is time consuming.  With a book blog double the time I spend because unless I am posting on a Did Not Finish I actually read the book.  Yeah I have to occasional guest post and movie or themed piece but I do this for 8 to 12 or even more hours a day.

by me, my painting teacher liked it.

While I originally thought I could do blogging as a profitable endeavor I seem to be missing that boat. Sad to say, I made more money painting but probably spent more. I paint in oil and pastels and they are costly. But I never sold paintings for much more than $200. And rarely sold more than two a year.

Any ideas?  I guess I could blog about painting. Are you at all interested in seeing my paintings?