A clear slate and some time

Yesterday I purchased drawing materials with the idea of honing my figure and portraiture skills in tandem with oil painting. What I have in mind will move faster if I do predatory drawings as opposed to working it out directly on my canvas as in my Rubens experiment; something much easier to do in smaller formats or painting with good reference material.

One of the things I discovered while doing the florals, was it required arrangement and staging, as in a still life, which I was doing directly on my canvas.....if you will, alibiing. I don't mind doing that in the last 15 minutes of a painting. Adding the flowers to the Rubens composition was time consuming and didn't always work and occasionally passages had to be wiped out.....laborious and not my way of working at all, especially on a huge canvas.

I have 40 odd years experience custom designing from things that don't exist....most of it was done from my concept drawings or renderings. Now, going forward, I'm going to use the same process for my larger work. Since I know exactly what I want and in my immediate world it doesn't exist...it seems logical I'll have to create it via renderings. Nothing new about what I want either, it's been done for eons. I'm not after total originality because everything is derived from something...it's how we put it together that matters. It was how Manet composed and executed Olympia and the time in which he did it that mattered.....not because it was an original idea, but because it was a freshened idea!

I could make oil studies all day long, but not at my desk watching a movie on my computer as I often do. My head is always somewhere else anyway, so I'm going to take advantage of that time with drawing and not waste it at the easel!

I don't want a repeat of the Rubens experiment.  I had an idea but not a clear idea of merging flowers and figures in a setting. Midway through I started thinking of multiple possibilities on how I would use this in my next painting....even did some quick sketches (below). It really meant, for all intent and purposes, this painting no longer had my attention! It was finished, it's usefulness was over! But I decided to carry this huge animal to completion because I don't like unfinished projects lying around as a distraction. A bad painting won't bother me near as much as an unfinished one will! So with a clear slate in front of me and a plan to accomplish the deed.....I'm good to go again!

CONCEPT DRAWINGS
The beginning of an idea!

Ink drawings done midway of Rubens experiment, not totally formed yet, I still need detail gathering, like my main figure or figures before a final arrangement can be established.....that will take some time.

dwg 1

dwg 2

dwg 3

SOME FIGURES

dwg 4

dwg 5

dwg 6

My next step is to do some 20x20 figure studies in oil for skin tones....plus just plain practice. In the end I need to rotate figures in  my head.....even make pose changes if needed. I'm also adding additional elements like flowers, mirror reflections and luxury fabrics like silk Damask and velvets.

My small oil studies won't go to waste because most likely the galleries will want them.

Later....