Some years ago, a work buddy whose birthday is one day different from mine brought me a beautiful silk stole from Hong Kong. I had no immediate occasion on which to wear it, but I knew immediately that I would love painting it.
I'd recently had my personal critique at the local art school and thought I'd act on one of the casual recommendations the artist-instructor had made. In answer to his question about the kind of planning I did before I started to paint, I'd said that I played with different thumbnail formats. "Fine," he said, "but that's just a start. Then, do lots of small-scale studies and try out different colours and compositions." When I asked how many studies he usually did, this painter of 20-foot-long abstract paintings said, "Oh, up to 16 sometimes." Gulp. I had no intention of doing 16, but I thought I'd give the studies a serious try.
The stole is a soft dove grey, with a small black-flecked overall pattern and accents of black Chinese characters and larger red Chinese symbols, a black border and "frog" closures. All that was needed in addition, I thought, was a single pomegranate.
And so I set to work, first making six small thumbnail sketchesn (shown above) as preliminaries to 8" x 10" studies. Here's the first study, trying out an overall blue tone:
Hmmmm. I could see that the Chinese characters and symbols, while enticing, could become just too much of a good thing. With Study Two, I reined in the fabric's pattern and tried a greenish colour to complement the red pomegranate.
No! Didn't like it at all. So with Study Three, I went back to the blue and thought I'd try a mirrrored duet of the pomegranate and a circular symbol.
At this point, I had two huge revelations: (1) Enough of the blue:-- I liked the actual colours of the stole and wanted to try working engagingly with grey and black. (2) I was working too close -- the effects I wanted might be better realized if I stood back to include more of the stole and its interaction with the flat background.
Oh, yes, another realization: I was becoming heartily sick of this study business, dangerously close to being bored with the whole thing. Four studies were more than enough -- certainly enough to demonstrate that this wasn't a working method I could see myself ever repeating again.
I took a deep breath, prepared my good paper, and came up with the best-yet placement of the fabric, folds and pomegranate. Here's the finale, "A Gift from Candice," copyright 2005.
What's more, unable to let go of that luscious pomegranate, I made a very quick small painting -- no preliminary study! -- that's still one of my favourites: "Pomegranate Float," copyright 2005.
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