Editing: Spark of Life

Keeping It Fresh, One Step Removed from Reality

I'm nearing the finish of my 10th in the space series. It's evening. I'm in my beautiful mountain studio, and the painting is lit by two special lights in stereo. They register at 5500 Kelvin, which is almost the equivalent of a cloudy day outdoors. I found it to be the best artificial lighting for my painting. In the background, I'm listening to Beethoven's first piano concerto with Toscanini conducting. Oddly, it's overlapping and competing with the chirps of evening crickets.

I'm searching for the finishing touches of the painting to add power, light, and life. I've been painting all day since my morning coffee, and I’ve been punching up the highlights on her body. In part, that's working great, but I'm missing a little bit of the magical wonder. As many of you creators know, there's a fine line between the energy and life of early stages and the finishing work that might be a touch too polished.

I’m caught between making chicken piccata with lemon, capers, and white wine, having a glass of wine while watching a movie or television series, or working through the night.

But I'm totally jazzed, as I know what I need to do to put the spark of energy into the finishing touches. You can see in my pencil drawing of the nude figure, which was drawn from life over three or four sessions, each three hours long, that every single mark in the drawing was done from direct perception of the model. In the case of what I’m working on now, it's the contour lines. In real life, the edges—let’s say of your fingers or your hand—aren’t all the same. They vary. You can check that out right now by looking at your hand and noticing that some edges are soft without high contrast, while some almost look like they have a little bit of black outlining a section of your finger. Those edges, and the variation in them, were what I saw when drawing the model.

This painting is one step away from direct perception, and I find that a very reasonable compromise, especially since the entire painting—this goddess in space with a nebula background—is about as far as my imagination goes. Giving it touches that deal with direct perception tethers it to reality and gives a real life quality.

Just now, I’ve worked on the contour of her breasts, her jawline, her upper arm, and part of her foot. You can see how the lines vary, both in the painting and in the original drawing. So I’m trying to get the painting to mimic those lines to give a fresh, dynamic feeling. In the drawing, I circled in pale yellow a little dot of light that is on the edge of the foot. Instead of just smoothing out that highlight in the painting, I'm trying to give it a bit of punch, transferring the freshness from the drawing to the painting. Up close, I can't always tell how it's working, but when I stood back just a few minutes ago, I started feeling goosebumps because of all the flowing energy going in and out, changing and flowing. It brings a big smile to my face and gives me a kind of Eureka feeling.

Either tonight or tomorrow, I will go through the contours of her entire body, looking at the line quality, comparing it to the original drawing, and making little changes in tone. I’ll look at the lights and darks on either side of the line. I’m feeling very excited, knowing that not only will I finish the piece soon, but these touches will add to the overall painting.