Making Of a Painting // Wholehearted - DAY 9 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. Here is Day Nine - visit my blog to see day 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8

DAY NINE (Jan 13, 2007)

This painting has come to mean something completely different to me from when i started. In the beginning it was about emptiness and end then end it is really about fullness and how i Wholeheartedly embrace those who i love and the things that are important to me such as my art career. I went through some big changes while painting this. So i changed the name of the painting from ' Hole Hearted ' to ' Wholehearted' and this realization was so important to me that i wanted to make it a literal part of the painting. I spent 2 hours in the afternoon planning the text design and worked from 10 pm till around 2 applying the text.

I spent about an hour downloading gothic fonts... Made a sample sheet of about 20 fonts with the word Wholehearted. I picked one that felt very storybook to me... once upon a time vibe. I then used photoshop to place the text where i wanted it and printed it out. It looked plain so i decided to draw some designs around it by hand using a sharpie.

Once i had the basic design, i redrew it in illustrator to clean up the lines and to really make it as symmetrical as possible.

I then printed it up on two sheets of paper and used it to transfer the text design to the painting using carbon paper. It makes a line so light that it can hardly be seen and does not apply to oil paint well, so i actually had to press hard and etch the painting so i could see the line from certain angles based on how the light hit it.

Using metallic gold paint i block in the letters... here you see the original title before that meaningful 'W' is added.

I dropped a shadow behind the text to make it pop... Did this by simply brushing a dark color with lots of linseed oil mixed in... and then taking an old bristle brush and blending the edges until you cant see any hard lines.

Added a black outline around the letters. Now the text looks good but is too dominant... so as you will see i do things to make it fall back in*&to the painting tomorrow (day 10 -the final day)

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