When Is It Done?

I always have quite a few paintings going but seldom any finished ones to show. Finally this one is done. I started it at the end of a very long winter, with many gray Portland days, when I was hungry for a little springtime color. It was looking a little too sweet for me until I added some rough charcoal drawing on top.

I keep 4 or 5 canvases going at a time and rotate them on my easel to see what needs to be done next.

When I think one is getting finished, I leave it on my easel for a week, and if I can keep walking by without needing to change anything, I know it's done. This one sat in an almost completed stage for a while, but I wondered if the white spot on the left side was a bit too strong and drawing the eye.

Somewhere along the line, I learned that a painting should be satisfactory both right side up and upside down. So I turned this one upside down and left it that way for a while. Upside down, the white spot did pull my eye too much, so I toned it down slightly as you can see in the first painting in this post.

If you paint and don't already know about them, you should check out Nova Color paints. Fantastic acrylic paints at the best prices ever! They only sell directly to artists so you don't have to pay for all the marketing to get them into stores. I love them!

I use a big sheet of freezer paper for my palette of alizarin crimson, cad. red, cad. yellow, cerulean, ultramarine blue, and titanium white.

With two kids at home, it's always challenging to find a big enough chunk of time to paint. I can easily pick up stitching here and there, but I hate to set up a palette of paint and then waste it because I have to run somewhere. Recently, I made this great discovery. If I mist my palette and put a plastic bin on top, I can keep paints moist for a couple weeks. It's not pretty, but it bought me a lot more painting time.