A painting can take a long time. I use watercolours and build up the colour in a series of layers. Sometimes I wait for the paint to dry, sometimes paint wet on wet. The photographs here are taken at periods of about 2 hours.
While painting Ithere is a constant questioning, attempting to balance the painting. The example shown is for a title page for a nativity book for Little Brown USA.
The image starts by being drawn faintly in pencil and then I begin to work in the colours.
I thought it best to work into the faces first, as if they didn't come right there would be no point continuing with the work.
In the painting below you can see a faint outline of some lilies behind Mary's head. Over the next couple of hours I decided to take up the white space around the main panel with lilies and for the sake of balance painted the lilies inside the panel out. There is a faint outline of lilies in the picture. For reference I went to a flower shop and bought a huge bunch of flowers.
Over the next couple of hours I began to work into the lilies in the border and a little more into the faces.
By this point I had decided that I wanted to use gold leaf on the background to Mary and the angel, so put a dark wash into this area.
Painted more flowers and thought about wings. Had a cup of tea.
This drawing board had sat in my studio for about three months with the main panel drawn, but I had no idea what I wanted in the background. I had already tried the piece once, and it didn't work. The panel with the strawberries had been drawn in and the angels wings were painted in similar tones to match, though I have to admit, although the balance is good, was intuitive rather than through any conscious decision.
More working into the lilies and a little into the figures.
In order to get a balance right between the panel and the background, time to put the gold leaf on.
Finishing off, balancing the picture, adding detail. Still not finished but time to leave it alone for a bit, like letting something settle. It is often difficult to see a piece of work properly after being so close to it for so long, and sometimes helpful to sneak up and catch it unawares to work out what needs to be done to finish it.
