A Painting Process

Live Oak Sketches

©2010 Caroline Roberts

The last week has seen me painting up a storm with a renewed focus. I think it has something to do with a new work process. The first weeks of January were unseasonably cold for Houston and my tiny space heater could not get the studio warm enough to work in. It's hard to paint with numb fingers! So I moved my studio inside the house and worked with pencils, conté and reference photos to create little thumbnails of ideas. I deliberately worked fast and aimed for quantity.

As the weather, and the studio, warmed up I started working on larger scale sketches and color studies. So far I have developed two or three of the little thumbnails, but that work has energized them.

Live Oak study on raw canvas

©2010 Caroline Roberts

At first I intended to develop all the ideas and review them as a body, but I decided to try starting on one which I continue to develop the others. Right now I have four paintings underway in the studio - two are near completion but were started some months ago. Surprisingly these paintings have been boosted by the new work that is starting.

I really think that working on a group or series of paintings en masse like this is going to help me be more productive and have less slumps between paintings.