My experience with oil painting is that although it has moments of ease and "magic" it is very hard work and somewhat mystifying to me when a piece comes together in the end. I know the basic principles and steps of my process but there are hundreds or thousands of decisions and actions that make up a painting. It really is an act of faith that any of it will amount to anything that will have a life of its own at all. Dozens of times in a work there is a moment when a passage I am working on suddenly "pops" into being, or into its illusion. Sometimes that moment comes quickly after a short amount of work and sometimes after many hours of hard work. My process and is not nearly as predictable as I would like to think and the only thing predictable about the grand moment when the work as a whole "pops" into its finished self is that it will indeed come if I give it my faith and sit there long enough working.Here are photos of my latest portrait. It is oil on board and it is 26x46." This is the third of a set I have been doing for a single family and so they all share the same size and similar compositions. The first two are in the portrait section of my website. I have included some images of the work in progress as well. Click on any of the photos for a closer view(thanks to Wordpress).
