Making Of a Painting // Hole Hearted - DAY 1 January 2007

Thought it would be fun to share my painting process... as it's going down... So every day till this painting is done I will be posting updated images on my blog at: http://www.myspace.com/scottsaw

Check it daily and feel free to spout out.

DAY ZERO (like a week ago) - the Brainfart

This vision popped into my brain during a normal work day... seemed very relevant to me so I took the time to make a quick sketch before it faded away.

Close up of the sketch. I generally don't get to carried away with detail or value at this point... i try to just capture the essence of the vision and make some quick notes so i can remember how i saw it in my head. Later .. when i really start thinking about it as a painting a lot of the initial color ideas go out the window cuz they wont quite work in the grand composition - or i make rules to stay within a ltd pallet. This painting will be a full range of a muted red and have gold, black and white - in fact, all my new paintings are gonna be those colors for a while.

DAY ONE - (Jan 5, 2007) Refining the drawing and starting the painting

Scanned the sketch, imposed a decent heart shape in photoshop, enlarged image to actual painting size, printed in 4 parts and taped it together.

Using tracing paper I redraw the image - cleaning it up an refining some detail. The above version is on tracing paper and will be used to transfer image to wood.

Close up of drawing on tracing paper. I will now place a sheet of carbon paper between this and the wood and transfer the core image. I use carbon paper to transfer the image to the wood so i get a clean line drawing on the wood - seems kinda anal, i know, when i paint thick i just draw on the wood... but with the staining technique i am using now this works good cuz it enables me to expose the wood grain without a ton of sketchy pencil lines. Plus the carbon does not smear or bleed like graphite does.

Here you see the drawing transferred onto the wood and i started painting. I am very picky about the grain of the wood and how it will work with the image. As it turns out 3/4 of the panels i had in the studio were badly warped (major prob with workin on wood!) ... So i had to use this one that has a bit of a loose grain... so we'll see how it looks in the end... generally speaking, the tighter the grain, the more intricate the pattern and the the stronger the color... so in this case i will have to go over it a couple times to get rich colors because of the loose grain.

I started with metallic gold paint (right out of the tube). First i brush it on thick where i want it, then wipe it off with a paper towel to show the wood grain.

To Be Continued ... keep an eye on my blog to see what happens next - will update daily till its done:

http://www.myspace.com/scottsaw