NEW Painting: "J+X"

Oh yeah, time to start a new painting.  And I'm going to put updates here every Thursday. 

This new canvas is small and it's a simpler subject, so I'm hoping it won't take a YEAR to finish (ok, that was dramatic--it doesn't really take me that long to paint considering I only paint 3 hours a day one day a week only during the class semester).

Ok, enough blathering.  Time for the pics.

Here is where I started:

Blank canvas is blank.

And here is where I ended up.

Good progress!

Wait. . .I need to show off the painting I'm working from and share what I'm up to to explain why my "after" looks so weird.

I'm deconstructing one of my existing paintings, "Jackie and Xerxes".  A minimalist thing, where I just want to pick out the major shapes from the original.  I'm going to shade it a bit like the original, which I started a bit in the gray around the hoof on the left side of the painting. . .wait, I need to show the original for reference.

Yeah, that explains it a little better. 

When I first started I was going to just make basic shapes but then I liked the odd shapes of the original.  Like the bum patch, how it curves and that curve relates to the curve of Jackie's head--and there are up curves on both the hoof and the boots.  There are only two "real" circles, Jackie's head and Xerxes eye.  Then there's the dramatic blue block-ish shape of Jackie's dress (which I plan to shade quite a bit to mimic the deep color of the original--but blue is so sheer it takes a bit to build up the color on the canvas).  Then there are the more straight lines of Xerxes mane and Jackie's hair. 

I can't decide if I'm going to add a tiny bit of detail from Jackie's dress and accessories.  I kind of like the idea of adding one yellow dot and one pink dot to the dress.  The yellow one would represent the flowers (and compliment Xerxes's eye) and the pink would represent the pink elephant on the purse and tie into the color of Jackie's hair.  It would also break up the big blue blob of the dress, minimizing it a bit since I have no other blues like that on the canvas (though I like that Jackie's head and dress don't have "matching" colors anywhere else on the canvas--it makes her stand out).

Blah, blah, blah, enough painting talk.  Well except to say I'm enjoying doing something totally different from all my other paintings.  It's fun and very relaxing.