Starting a new painting: Pool

You may recall that my friend, Catriona, took this photo of me as I was blissfully floating in a pool during our vacation together in Hawaii in June.


The original photo by of Catriona Burns

I loved that photo (and the blissfulness that it represented) so I plugged it into instragram, cropped it, put a filter on it, and made it a profile picture on Facebook.


instagrammed

I think it's a fairly compelling image and decided to use it for my next oil painting.

Last week, my painting instructor, Dean, had me do a small study of the image. I used a small, 8x8" canvas, quickly sketched it out. It was helpful to get a good feel of the colors and the composition before painting it on a larger canvas. The study enabled me to experiment a bit with texture and color, and helped me make some decisions before committing to the larger format. I only spent a couple of hours on it, so it's not nearly perfect, but serves the purpose. I'm really happy with the effect of the water. The figure needs some correcting, as well as the colors of the top of the pool. Again, not meant to be a finished piece, but a good experiment.


The Pool Study

Today, I sketched it out on a larger, 24 x 24" canvas and brought it over to Dean's house for my lesson this afternoon.


All sketched and ready to go!

I worked on it for a couple of hours, mostly focusing on filling the canvas with color and getting in the first layer of paint. So far, so good! I'm really happy so far with the composition, and how it looks on a larger format. The color is off, but it's a decent start.


Pool Painting - end of first session

I ordered a whole bunch of blue paint online, so I hope to get it early next week so I can continue working on it. :)

It's not intended to be a "self portrait", but since I'm the only figure in the piece, I suppose it is one. I'm reluctant to call it as such, though. I just think it's a neat image. :)