Planning a Set of Paintings

I have a show to plan for, and it (finally) occurred to me that while I worked fairly hard at planning my poetry, I have never done any planning for my painting work.

But having a collection to create helped me get going, and here’s my progress so far.

1. Upgrade my canvases

I still use student grade canvases, which are much more affordable, but also less sturdy. My painting girlfriend pointed out the fact that if someone purchases a painting, they like to feel that it will last a long time. I’m pretty sure even my low-budget canvases are not going anywhere any time soon, but still. I decided to try my first high quality ones.

And I got lucky, and found them buy two, get two free.

Here’s what $500 worth of nice canvases—and at least one minor in-store panic attack—looks like. So glad I only paid $250.

Thank you, Patreon supporters, for enabling me to do that all at once!

Here’s what the backs of both types of canvas look like. You can see how much thicker and better-made the nice one on the right is.

2. Make some planning notes

When I was writing poetry I had little notebooks stashed in plain sight everywhere. One on my desk, one in my car, one by my computer, another in my dresser, a couple in my nightstand. (The nightstand was the most used location.)

So I found one small blank sketchbook at the house, and I bought another larger painting planning sketchbook, and sat down with pens and pencils. Here’s what I ended up with, after transferring my small page to the larger book.

I make pages like this every so often. In the past I have actually re-written these messy data dumps into a clean and better-organized document, but the original seems to be the one I always go back to, so why bother?

My main goal is to create enough new paintings to have a collection of 20 to 30 by next June to offer Tony for the show at his warehouse.

That’s going to be a stretch, because up until now I’ve only ever painted once a week. To make my goal I really need to paint twice a week, and possibly more, because I’m expecting some pieces to take multiple days to complete.

I intend to create oil paintings of all different sizes (and prices), and also include some watercolors, pen and ink, and so on.

2a. Fave ideas from planning

You can see the planning page for yourself, but here are a few things I particularly like from it.

Subject areas:

1. Quilts
2. Barns
3. Crows
4. Landscapes
5. Abstract
6. And

My fortune cookie this week said:

“Unexpected joys are waiting to be discovered in your next adventure.”

Best thought:

What would happen if…?

3. Go!

It’s easy to spend more time getting supplies and making plans than actually doing the job. If you look back on my planning page you’ll see at the very bottom: “Spend MORE time painting than planning.”

So I’ve already begun. After all, November is my “get ahead” month, and the sooner I begin working, the sooner everything can begin drying as well.

For my first painting on my new fancy canvases I chose a photo of a swallowtail on some thistles out at Green Knob, and I have laid down the initial painting already.

I plan to try something entirely new with it, part of which will mean that I need to paint over more than one day. I’m hoping to not abandon my alla prima practice entirely, but it felt good to start with a new technique idea.

Will post that soon!

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(I would post the link, but they come out formatted funny for reasons I haven’t figured out yet.)