100 Canvases: Canvas #15

As previously mentioned, I took a week-long "Expressionistic Figure Painting" workshop at The Art Students League with artist Barbara Yeterian.  We worked on our paintings in twenty-minute increments and I took photos at each breaking point.

At this point, I went home from class really not happy with the painting.  I just didn't like the pose -- the way the two models were interacting was just not interesting to me.  It wasn't telling a story.  So I took the photo you see above and doodled on it in Photoshop.

I liked this relationship much more, so I decided that the next class I would simply ignore the models and make my painting look the photo above.

One of the things that my instructor, Barbara, was super good at, was pointing out the little things that can make a huge difference in your painting.  I think the changes between the last few iterations of this painting are subtle, but really important.

Here's a closer look at the final painting:

I learned a few very important lessons while painting this canvas:

• I need to work larger.  All my paintings were done on 16x20 canvases and they are just too darn small.  Working on the figures as a whole was great, but it was difficult to get the subtlety I wanted with the form being so small.  The faces were particularly difficult to do at such a small size.  It's hard for me to figure out what the heck I'd do with a bigger canvas in this little apartment, but I need to do it in order to grow.
• For me, my paintings need to tell a story.  I'm not happy otherwise and so I'm glad I changed the pose in order to create more of a story.
• Hands, hands, hands -- I need to work on hands.  They're interesting in this painting, but very paw-like.

Thanks for stopping by!