finding my process in painting (with composition sketches and color studies)

After a few weeks of really diving into painting, I’m starting to get a handle on a creative process that seems to work for me in terms of generating ideas. I realized that I had way more ideas floating around in my head then I could work through in either watercolor or oil, so I’ve started keeping a sketchbook full of quick composition sketches.

In fact, it’s kind of appropriate that I snapped this messy picture of real life sketching at my kitchen table (yup, those are my salt and pepper grinders) to document this process, because I first started making these composition sketches on a napkin one night as my husband and I were finishing dinner.

Ever since then, I’ve been carrying that little sketchbook around with me, so that anytime I have a composition idea, I can capture it quickly. (And then I’ll typically fill the page with more variations of that same idea.)

From there, I take my favorite composition sketches and do color studies in watercolor. I’m finding I prefer to do these at home, either on my couch or at the kitchen table, because they make for a really great, non-digital way to wind down my day.

And from there, I’ll take those color studies into my studio and translate those into the oil paintings I’ve been working on, like the ones in this post and this post.

I have to admit that I’m finding this process really interesting, partly because it’s so different from the totally unplanned, expressionistic abstract paintings I was doing back in 2013. I like the idea that I can work abstractly (I’m just not interested in literal subject matter at this point in time), but that there can be process and planning involved.

I also really like that this process lets me work out ideas in three different speeds – fast in quick sketches, fairly quickly in my trusty watercolor markers, and then a bit slower in oil. That’s really key, because at the moment I feel like I have more ideas than time to execute them, and the quick composition sketches help me feel like the ideas aren’t slipping through my fingers!