More Process, But First....

Feb 18, ‘11

A Saturday morning; windy, alternately sunny/snow showers.  37◦’s with a wind chill factor depending upon how hard the wind is blowing at the moment.

I showed up this morning with every intention of beginning the painting but while I was sitting and thinking was struck with a case of the ‘but firsts....’

The But Firsts are the things that need to be done before another thing can be done.  My first But First, my pallet needed to be cleaned and replenished.  The But First on cleaning the pallet created a new but first, which was washing the dishes from last night.  The but first on that one was to hang yesterday’s wash to dry on the rack in the living room, the But First on replenishing the pallet had to do with finding the box with the paint and so on and so forth....

A lot of But Firsts have been tended to including a lot of work on the drawing in the form of erasing, lowering the roof on the foreground barn and generally cleaning up the drawing.   While I was going through my stash of paint I discovered 2 pigments I rarely use; Cinereous Blue and Indian Yellow.  I tested them out on sketch paper as shown in the photo.  As a result, I’m changing my color scheme.

A But First applied to my painting – apply Frisket to a few areas before I begin (and a few more times while building the painting).  

I’ve come to a point where the frisket has been applied, has dried.  I’m ready to do the sky – and eager to begin.   But First, time to start getting ready for a lunch date.  More soon.