Creative Process

Today I am going to give a little bit of insight into my thought process as I begin a new painting. It is going to be a fairly large painting, and it will take a little more time to complete than some of my painting-a-day smaller ones.

First the idea came into my mind that I would like to do a painting about clotheslines and clothes hanging on a clothesline. So I got out my photos of Italy taken in 2004 and found this one (shown top left). We saw laundry hung out to dry throughout Italy, and I thought it leant a lot of charm to the towns and cities. I took quite a few pictures of laundry, but unfortunately most were side shots that didn't turn out well, so this front shot is the one I came back to. Next I went to find a photo of the painting (Hung Out To Dry) that I had done before, using this photo as inspiration (shown top right). This painting had sold right away, and I remembered liking it and thinking I wouldn't mind keeping it around to have for myself.

Then I did some sketches of building and laundry, and more buildings with laundry, and came up with this one. I liked the idea of it being more than just a picture of that subject and having the space broken up with shapes within shapes.


I started out thinking my focal point would be on the bottom left where the dark dress hangs, but by the time I had finished this sketch, I had decided to make the focal point in the right square. The idea of a blue background was my initial concept, but the square on the left has blue sky at the top (similar to the first painting), and this bothered me. So when I painted the background I made it a darker value of textural simulated stone. I will paint the sky in the left square a nice blue, and in the right bottom windows I will show the blue again reflecting the sky. I will probably find blue somewhere else - maybe in some of the laundry.

Here is where I am right now with the painting which is on a half-sheet of watercolor paper. I have painted in acrylics. I have shaded the left sides
of the "squares" to make it look like papers laying on a surface. The "square" on the right will have shading on top of the middle square, so that there will be an illusion that it is on top of the rest of the "squares."

I am planning a sandstone kind of finish for the buildings and some nice colorful laundry blowing across the page.