Fresh Start Week! - Preliminary sketches

With a clean space before me and a head full of ideas I now forge ahead into the new set of work.

Which is overwhelming to say the least!

A sketchbook and 100 photos from 2 days cycling. (most trips are longer and around 200 images to work from) I start with the photos... go through, toss out the images that have nothing interesting going on.

• Down to 34 photographs.

Then I pull out a tiny little sketchbook, of which I have several. Will it be a passport sized one? My little newsprint one? Or the brown paper one? (All, by the way, from Muji.) And what to sketch with? Pencil, ink, charcoal, marker or pastels? I decide I don't need colour yet as I want to focus purely on the strong compositions. I opt for the brown paper sketchbook so I'm working on a mid-tone, then using white pastel and charcoal to sketch. (I grabbed some blue as a second slighty-lighter midtone too because I felt like it.)

This is fast work. Maybe a minute or two each. Grab a photo, get down the major elements, shade in the important bits that really create the composition. Spray with fixative and move on. 34 tiny sketches.

I put aside the photographs and just look at the sketches - pull out the ones that instantly grab my eye. The strongest. Look again, squinting to reduce them even more, and again pull out the strongest. Grab the photos again, match up to paintings, and consider why some of the strong photos have weak sketches. "But I like it" is not reason enough. Only two pass that test - in these cases it's the colour that would actually strengthen the composition but that can't be captured with in monochrome; the colour being the reason behind the photograph too. (Vivid green and violet-red on a shoreline at the Naze and a bright cherry-red painted line along the promenade in Frinton being the successful candidates of that round.)

• Down to 11 sketches.

Still too many, so my next studio day I'll do small studies. Either pastels or ACEOs/5" canvas paintings - both methods let me introduce colour.

• The goal: 5-6 images from this stretch of coast.

Next week:
The painting begins (blogging it will depend on how I feel about my progress)
Flashback Friday will return next Friday!